The August meteor shower will peak on Tuesday night - Reuters

MOSCOW, Aug. 11 – RIA Novosti. The August meteor shower, the most powerful, the Perseid meteor shower to peak on the night of August 13 – will appear in the sky up to 100 meteors per hour, according to the forecast of the International Meteor Organization (IMO).

Meteors are small particles of interplanetary matter the size of sand grains to peas. They are part of the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 20 kilometers per second at an altitude of almost instantly and burn up in the sky, leaving a trail of beautiful bright. The glow of some particularly bright meteors lasts a few seconds.

Perseids – one of the most powerful and well-known meteor showers, which occurs when the Earth is in the dust trail of Comet Swift-Tuttle (109P/Swift-Tuttle). Meteors of this stream can be observed from July 17 to August 24. According to the forecast IMO, the maximum meteor activity should reach 12 August from 18.15 to 20.45 GMT (22.15 MSK Monday – Tuesday 00.45 MSK). At this point, by meteor (under certain conditions of observation) can reach 100 “falling stars” per hour. This period of time will have on the waxing Moon, 14 August, she reached a phase of the first quarter and did not interfere with the observations of meteors.

Record for race cars

Perseids meteor shower was the champion not only in the number of meteors, but also on the number of cars – very bright “shooting stars”, the brightness of which reaches the brightness of Venus, NASA experts have found.

“We found that a meteor shower produces more cars (fireball), than any other. This is the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks between August 12 and 13,” – says Bill Cooke (Bill Cooke) of the meteor division of NASA.

He and his colleagues in 2008 with the help of the special automatic cameras installed in the south of the United States, carried out observations of meteors. During the five years of observation, scientists have recorded 528 cars associated with the Perseids. In second place was the Geminids (426), and one of the most famous streams – Leonids – has generated just 90 cars.

Scientists have linked a large number of cars to the large size of their parent body – the comet Swift-Tuttle. “It has a huge core – about 26 kilometers in diameter. Most of the other comets have a nucleus of only a few kilometers, so the comet Swift-Tuttle produces more meteors, many of which are large enough to produce fireballs,” – says Cook.

How was the star in the rain in 2012 – in the galleries RIA Novosti

Useful pollution

For astronomers

Perseids meteor shower will not only impressive sight – this phenomenon will help them in the observations of distant stars.

meteors burn up and evaporate at high altitudes in the atmosphere, leaving behind the “tails” of gas.

“The reason that it is important to astronomers this pollution is that we can make it glow with a laser and create a temporary artificial star. Believe it or not, but astronomers are not enough stars in the sky,” – says Chad Trujillo ( Chad Trujillo) of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.

Astronomers use these artificial star as a reference for adjusting complex adaptive optics systems that are used in modern telescopes. These systems allow you to minimize the impact of weather and technical distortions and get astronomical images of very high definition.

Thanks

Perseid meteor shower, scientists will be able to get artificial star “better quality”, and thus will be better and the pictures of distant astronomical objects.

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