This being the International Year of Astronomy, we’ve been excited to see and/or read about all the special celestial events this year. The next event, the Perseids meteor shower, has its best viewing late tonight, as long as the sky is clear — will the clouds part in our area of western North Carolina between Black Mountain and Old Fort? We hope so.
As mentioned earlier this year in our International Year of Astronomy post, the Swift-Tuttle comet is the parent of the Perseids, “shooting stars” that appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus. You can see upwards of 60-80 shooting stars every hour.
Check our past Perseid meteor shower post for more about the Perseids. And National Geographic has a page showing some Perseid photos for those of us who may get stuck under cloud cover tonight…