Conquerors Perseidsthe most spectacular summer “rain” of shooting stars will once again reach its peak this year in the heart of August.

On Thursday and especially on Friday evening, you can look for the Perseids in the night sky of our country and the northern hemisphere as a whole.

In fact, this year the peak of the meteors in question will almost coincide with the last of this year’s super full moons (04:36 Greek time on Friday), making it difficult to observe the Perseids.

The Moon will again be closer to the Earth than usual (the full moon will almost coincide with the perigee of the Moon) and at the same time will appear somewhat larger and brighter, “blowing out” a lot of “shooting stars”, except for the brightest ones.

After August, the next full moon will occur on September 10, 2022, and the next super full moon will occur on August 3, 2023.

What are the Perseids?

The Perseids are spectacular torrents of destruction as their “shooting stars” are fast and bright, usually with long fiery “tails”. They produce more bright meteors than any other meteor shower of the year.

Their record was in 1993, when they recorded about 300 meteors per hour, while usually “give” from 50 to 60 per hour. This year, due to the full moon, according to NASA, a maximum of 10 to 20 moons are expected to be visible per hour.

They appear in almost all parts of the sky, and not in any one, although, apparently, they come mainly from the northeast, from the region of the constellation Perseus, from which they get their name.

Meteors begin to fall rarely around July 17, gradually thicken and hold until August 24. The “show” begins shortly after sunset, but the closer it is to sunset, the more likely it is to see these “shooting stars” with the naked eye anywhere in the sky.

The Perseids, first recorded by Chinese astronomers in 36 AD. are caused by dust particles left behind by the massive tens of millions of kilometers long tail of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle as it crosses Earth’s orbit. The comet, discovered in 1862 by astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle (after whom it is named), has a massive nucleus about 26 kilometers in diameter.

The comet in question is the largest known celestial body that passes the Earth at regular intervals and completes an orbit around the Sun in about 133 years. Its last close pass of Earth was in 1992, and the next one is expected in 2125, and it poses no threat to our planet for the foreseeable future.

Its meteors, which typically weigh less than a gram, enter Earth’s atmosphere at nearly 60 km per second and ignite at an altitude of about 130 km when they first become visible to observers.

As they approach the earth at high speed, they break from friction and overheating (1650 degrees Celsius), at an altitude of more than 80 kilometers from the Earth’s surface, leaving behind bright traces.