The meteors will begin to fall next Thursday and do not pose a threat to Earth

The Director of the International Astronomy Center, a member of the International Meteor Organization, Engineer Muhammad Shawkat Odeh, expected that the "Pershawiyat" meteor shower will begin to fall on Thursday evening, August 12, stressing at the same time that the meteors do not pose any danger to the Earth's surface at all, even if they are in the form of a storm. .


He said that astronomers and amateur astronomers are preparing to observe the most popular meteor shower of the year, which is called the Perseid meteor shower, in reference to the constellation "Perseus", and the comet that causes this meteor shower is called "Swift Tuttle", and it revolves around the sun once every 130 years, and the meteors begin This meteor shower falls towards the Earth as it passes through the dust belt of the comet, and it occurs every year during the period from July 17 to August 24, and the number of meteors increases when the Earth crosses the densest area in this dust belt, and this period is every year between 11 and 13 August, and this year is very suitable for our region to see the Perseid meteors due to the lack of moon lighting at the peak time and because the peak time is suitable for the Arab region because it occurs at night before dawn.


He stressed that all meteors vanish before they reach the surface of the Earth, but that there is a real danger that dust particles may pose to satellites orbiting the Earth, as the speed of the meteor may reach 72 km per second (200 times the speed of sound), explaining that the collision of a particle At this speed, with a diameter less than the diameter of a human hair, it can form an electric spark that can disable sensitive satellite equipment, and thus stop it from working. For example, the communications satellite Olympus was disrupted during the Perseid meteor shower in 1993 due to a collision with one of the dust particles.


This year, astronomical forecasts indicate that the traditional peak of the Pershawiya meteor shower will occur on Thursday night, on Friday 12-13 August, between 07 and 10 pm GMT, and it is usually seen at the peak time between 50 to 75 meteors if monitored from It is a dark and suitable place, but in the case of monitoring from bright places inside cities or monitoring at a time far from the peak of the meteor shower, the observer may not see more than a few meteors only at best.


Odeh said that the Perseus group rises in this period around ten o'clock in the evening, and this means that the Perseid meteors begin to appear around ten o'clock in the evening, but their number is very few at this time, and with the passage of time the number of meteors will begin to increase to become more noticeable after midnight, and it will increase more with Approaching the time of dawn, so that the time before dawn is the most watched for meteors in general, and based on what was mentioned, those interested in seeing these meteors should monitor from a dark place far from the light of cities, starting from midnight Thursday on Friday, so that the largest number of meteors with dawn breaks.


He stated that the radiation point for this meteor shower is located in the northeast near the Perseus group, and the radiation point is an imaginary point from which all the meteors appear to be emanating from this point, but the meteors can be seen anywhere in the sky, and preferably Usually look about 45 degrees away from the point of radiation, and 45 degrees away from the horizon.


He explained that meteors are dust grains that enter the Earth's atmosphere, melt and evaporate as a result of friction with it and ionize part of it, and as a result we see them in the form of a bright line that moves quickly in the sky for a period of seconds or a fraction of a second.

It is rare that the diameter of the meteor exceeds the diameter of a grain of dirt, as the diameter of the meteor ranges between 1 mm to 1 cm only.

The speed of the meteor when it enters the atmosphere is between 11 to 72 km per second.

The meteor begins to appear at an altitude of approximately 100 km above the surface of the earth, and the number of meteors that fall on the ground is about 100 million per day, most of which are not visible to the naked eye.

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