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Perseid Meteor Shower To Peak This Weekend

Posted by Hemos on Sat Aug 12, 2006 11:10 PM
from the go-out-and-watch-the-sights dept.
Space Science
Krishna Dagli writes "This weekend provides one of the year's best opportunities to see some "shooting stars". The annual Perseid meteor display is expected to peak on Friday and Saturday night. Meteors are bits of dust or rock that plunge into the Earth's atmosphere and burn up, making bright streaks in the sky. It does not take a large object to produce a visible meteor — most are the size of a grain of sand or a small pebble."
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  • They're the aliens, trying to establish contact but getting attacked by the USAF.

  • Late Late Late (Score:5, Funny)

    by iced_773 (857608) <jft_773@NoSPam.yahoo.com> on Saturday August 12 2006, @11:12PM (#15896977)
    is expected to peak on Friday and Saturday night.

    Shoot, I missed most of it.
  • Hello this is Slashdot. I don't think we really needed the 3rd grade scienst lesson.

    Plus you know it is sort of Sunday here in the UK, doesn't that make this news story rather useless to a large population of the readers (not to mention Americans who will be sleeping at 11pm - Guy trying to be funny. It's not funny that Slashdotters sit up late, save the joke).

    • Re:Erm.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by gadzook33 (740455) on Saturday August 12 2006, @11:18PM (#15897000)
      I don't think we really needed the 3rd grade scienst lesson.

      but a spelling one would be nice.
    • Tags are not comments, they're ment to help people search for topics. Write a comment or leave

      Well, the most common tags include "yes", "no", "fud", "notfud", "duh", and "maybe", so it appears the democratic process has pwned your opinion.
      • Things like 'fud' and 'wishfulthinking' are perfectly valid as tags - if you want to search for stories that Slashdotters thought were FUD or wishful thinking. There's room for more than one tag - so something tagged 'linux', 'fud' and 'wishfulthinking' would allow people to, say, find stories about Linux that Slashdotters thought were fud (or wishful thinking) or just plainly about Linux.

      • Re:Not merely 3rd grade science... (Score:5, Informative)

        by bdp (41335) on Sunday August 13 2006, @01:04AM (#15897256)
        It should also be noted that the distinction between meteors and meteorites is one of particle size, not composition, and since this is 3rd grade science it should be added that meteors are the smaller of the two.

        That's not true. The distinction between a meteor and a meteorite is that meteors do not fall all the way to the ground, and meteorites do.

        Since the comet takes 150 years to complete an orbit, it would also seem to follow that there must be less debris in successive years until the comet sweeps by again, so you've missed all the really good showers until 2126 anyway.

        This also isn't true. Stuff continues to move out there, so we don't pass through the exact same spot in the debris trail every year. How big the meteor shower is varies from year to year.

        I'll let somebody else point out that the orbit is 133 years, not 150.

  • We dont like the Moon! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gothmolly (148874) on Saturday August 12 2006, @11:14PM (#15896992)
    This year's Perseid shower is a dud, due to a nearly full moon.

  • I sense... (Score:4, Funny)

    by wwiiol_toofless (991717) on Saturday August 12 2006, @11:20PM (#15897007)
    A great disturbance in the Force. It was like a million voices crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced as millions of Dads finally attempted to use their $600 Costco telescopes, only to realize they had thrown out their manuals with the box...
  • I like the formatting of this story, especially the use of the anchor tag. Very refreshing.

  • Um... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Kawahee (901497)
    "This weekend provides one of the year's a href="http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns? id=dn9732&feedId=space_rss20">best opportunities to see some "shooting stars". The annual Perseid meteor display is expected to peak on Friday and Saturday night. ..."

    Aren't slashdot editor's meant to be able to understand HTML? Another prime example for my signature:

  • Too late (Score:4, Funny)

    by FlyByPC (841016) on Saturday August 12 2006, @11:23PM (#15897016) Homepage
    ...looks like the posting's HTML got holed by one of the Perseids -- one of the tags got taken clean out!
  • I've got plenty of "<'s" if the editors need some. I'll sell 'em for cheap.

  • The View is Good from up high (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2006, @11:26PM (#15897031)
    I camped on the summit of a 14,000ft peak last night. I've never seen so many shooting stars despite the full moon and the light pollution of a distant city. It was beautiful... also cold.

    • I camped on the summit of a 14,000ft peak last night. I've never seen so many shooting stars

      Are you sure those are shooting stars? If you're not well acclimated, funny things can happen as low as 10k. Speaking from experience here, although if you hiked up you probably did it slow enough. I had the rather interesting experience of driving up Mt. Evans in Colorado after spending less than a week in Denver, and my home alt. is less than 500 ft. There were no shooting stars as it was broad daylight, j

      • Almost anybody who lives in the mountains of Colorado knows you don't need oxygen to climb a 14er. You say 10,000 feet requires oxygen? That means that all the people who are skiing at places like Crested Butte would need oxygen, since you get off the ski lift more than a thousand feet above that altitude. Skiing is also much more vigorous than flying a plane, but people don't go blind from lack of oxygen while doing it, even above 10,000 feet.

        FAA regulations are overly cautious due to other circumsta

  • As slashdot says... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MattS423 (987689) on Saturday August 12 2006, @11:31PM (#15897041)
    "Well, you should have used the preview button!"
  • I went out with my girlfriend tonight to take a look, but it pretty much sucked. I saw one blip and that was all. The moon was far too bright and made viewing impossible.

  • Meteorite Hit Three Blocks From Me Once (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chromozone (847904) on Saturday August 12 2006, @11:56PM (#15897109)
    My hometown of Peekskill New york got hit with a meteorite back in the 90's. It crashed through the back of an old junker car belonging to 17 year old girl. She was in tears. Turned out she got about 80,000 USD for the rock and the car. It was only known car to be hit. The car and meteorite went on display in Museum Of Natural History and other museums around the world. It was also filmed going across sky in Washington. Every year around this time I hope for my car to get hit. A view of meteor in sky before it hit is on this cool meteor site:

      http://fireball.meteorite.free.fr/index_en.html [meteorite.free.fr]

  • closing anchor tags (Score:3, Informative)

    by 56ker (566853) on Sunday August 13 2006, @12:06AM (#15897135) Homepage Journal
    As it seems closing tags is beyond people here is the correct link [newscientistspace.com] for those who can't be bothered going through the rigmarole of copy & paste.
  • When is Leonid peaking?

  • Meteors are bits of dust or rock that plunge into the Earth's atmosphere and burn up, making bright streaks in the sky.

    Ah, the wikipedia mentality: lots of desire to "explain", no actual grasp of the facts. I'm not even going to touch the "dust or rock" description. But note that meteors come in all sizes. It's true that most burn up in the atmosphere. (I seem to recall reading that this happens thousands of times a day.) But some are big enough to leave their remains (meteorites) [unm.edu] on the surface of the plan

  • I use them as a weather indicator (Score:3, Funny)

    by zenst (558964) on Sunday August 13 2006, @03:18AM (#15897438) Homepage Journal
    SImple - If I read anything about a meteor shower that is has the slightest chance of being visable to the naked eye. Then I know for a fact it will be one of the most misrable clodiest days for ages, even after few good solid weeks without a cloud in the sky.

    We had meteor forcast, its cloudy that even the clouds are obscured by clouds.

    I there conclude that all these reports of meteor showrs are causing global warming - FIN :).

  • Stuff that matters! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jugalator (259273) on Sunday August 13 2006, @06:59AM (#15897792) Journal
    On Slashdot, you're reminded of stuff that matters a full year in advance!

    Thanks!
  • It's a dupe because we've had reports about this on 2004/08/10 [slashdot.org], 2003/08/13 [slashdot.org], 2002/08/08 [slashdot.org], ...

    I can almost see a pattern emerging... D'oh!

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