July 30, 1980
Fireworks from the outer spaces
Perseid meteors peak August 11 & 12
“See that shooting star?
. .Oh, it’s gone!”’ On any
clear night you can see
meteors cross the sky. All
you need is patience, and on
the average you can spot six
or seven each hour. But at
certain times of the year,
meteors are noticeably more
abundant as the earth
passes through regions of
space containing large num-
bers of meteoroids, thought
to be debris scattered by
comets as they move
within the vicinity of the
sun.
This August, enthusiasts
of these ‘‘celestial streak-
ers’’ will gather at sites far
from the cities’ glare and
bright lights for a first-hand
look at the famed Perseid
Meteors, sometimes re-
ferred to as ‘‘The Tears of
Saint Laurence’’ since they
occur around the time of the
Feast of Saint Laurence on
August 10.
The show has already
begun, in case you haven’t
noticed, but the real spec-
tacle will debut Saturday
night, August 9, and reach
maximum intensity two
nights later. The forerun-
ners of the Perseid swarm
begin to appear as only a
handful for an entire night’s
watch around July 20. By
August 9, one might
average a meteor sighting
every five or six minutes. On
the night of maximum
activity, late Monday, Aug-
ust 11, into the early
morning hours of Tuesday,
August 12, a person with
perfect viewing conditions
will see the display grow in
intensity each hour as the
constellation Perseus climbs
higher into the northeastern
sky. Just before dawn,
Perseids will be piercing the
atmosphere at the rate of
about one meteor per
If anyone asks,
Say, “I’ve got the cark.”
From DARKENED DOOR.
Chester Wittell Poetry
WHY POETS LIVE IN GARRETS
‘Tis said a certain poet and a parrot
Once lived together in a dingy garret,
And that the poet used to spend his time
Teaching the parrot how to speak in rhyme.
Although with endless patience did he try,
His poems, it seems, the public would not buy.
He even sold the shabby coat he wore
And tried to hawk his verse from door to door;
Until at last he said: ‘‘Though it be folly,
I think I'm going to teach my poems to polly.”
One day two matrons of society
Went slumming, living’s underside to see.
The day was warm and as a parrot will,
The bird was perched upon a window-sill,
Squawking according to its wonted use
The poet’s gleaning of the lyric muse.
One of the matrons, pausing as she heard
The rhymed recital of the mimic bird,
Said, looking upward spell-bound to the garrett:
‘“‘How wonderful! just listen to that parrot.”
—Chester Wittell
SCARK”?
Speaking of four-lettered words,
There’s one in every dictionary
That should be yanked out, put to work
By every Tom and Dick and Harry.
The word is spelled: C, A, R, K.
It means ‘‘the care you're giving
To the green-backed folding stuff it takes
To pay for decent living.”
So worry on, my worthy friend,
And may God save the mark.
‘What's the matter?”
—Chester Wittell
minute, with sometimes as
many as two or three.
The darker the backdrop
of the night sky, as well as
how much of the night sky
you can see, are the
determining factors of how
many meteors will be visible
to a single observer. For
instance, in mountain areas
the nights can be velvet
black—perfect viewing con-
ditions for spying even the
quickest and faintest streak.
In suburban areas, the sky
background lightens up
significantly, especially
when you look towards large
adjacent cities. It is possible
to watch the Perseids from a
large metropolitan area, but
even in the relative darkness
of a city park on the peak
night, only five to ten
meteors will be visible each
hour. In a city you will also
be contending with local
smoke and haze, as well as
bright lights and tall
buildings.
Two conditions are con-
spiring to make this year’s
Perseids a spectacular
show. First, they nearly
coincide with a new moon,
unlike last year when the
moon was at a gibbous (%
full) phase and washed the
sky of all but the brightest
meteors—this year skies
will stay dark all night long.
Also, according to British
and Canadian meteor ex-
perts, the earth will be
running to the ‘‘core’’ of the
meteor stream sometime
between 10:00 pm EDT
August 11 and 4:00 am EDT
August 12. So, much of
North America will be on the
night side of the earth when
the Perseids reach their
peak in what could be the
finest meteor display in
some years.
The most comfortable
observing platform is a
reclining lawn chair with a
sleeping bag a close second.
Lie back, look straight
overhead and into the
northeast.
The number of meteors
isn’t all that makes the
Perseids the most popular of
the dozen or so annual
meteor swarms. Swifter and
brighter than other displays,
they occasionally leave thin,
bright incandescent smoke
trails that quickly fade out
like ribbons of fire left by a
skyrocket.
In the evening hours, the
meteors will be catching
earth from behind in its
orbit, and will appear to
move slowly on long paths
across the sky (‘‘falling
stars’’). These pre-midnight
Perseids are usually tinted
orange and gold. After
midnight when Perseids are
striking earth more or less
head-on, you're more likely
to see the swifter ‘‘shooting
stars’ which appear as
short, bright streaks of light
sometimes ending in flames
or exploding—the so-called
““fireballs’’ or ‘‘Bolides.”
The word meteor is a
distortion of the original
Greek word ‘‘meteora,’”’
meaning ‘‘things in the
air.”’ Clouds, rain, snow and
lightning would also fit this
description. The Persieds,
however, are lifeless bits of
dust and ice orbiting in
interplanetary space where
there is no air. Meteors are
so small and fragile that
they rarely penetrate deeper |
than 60 miles or so above
the earth. Even the ‘‘big”’
meteors are no more than
pea-sized. According to
Todd Gross, chief meteor-
ologist of Compu-Weather,
inc., Flushing, New York,
“meteors make such a
splash in the sky because
their speed is 37 miles per
second (134,000 mph),
about 100 times the speed of
a rifle bullet. This friction
August.
.. Fi;
SUSQUEHANNA TIME—Page 9
with our atmosphere raises
them to white-hot heat in a
flash, causing the display.”
In recent years, Persied
watchers have noticed an
increase in the incidence of
fireball meteors. Some have
been particularly striking. In
1977 a Perseid seen over
Arkansas almost matched
the glow of a quarter-moon,
while the next year a meteor
rivaling the full-moon
blazed over Scandinavia!
It has been suggestedthat
these big meteors may be
related to the Swift-Tuttle
comet, which probably
began shedding the cosmic
debris we know as the
Perseids some 40,000 years
ago. The earth crosses paths
with this comet’s orbit each
The Swift-Tuttle
comet was last seen in 1862.
It should return anytime
between now and mid-1983,
but due to uncertainties in
orbital calculations we're
not completely certain of
this. The fact that the
Perseids seem to have
gained in intensity these
past few years appears to be
circumstantial evidence that
the comet is indeed out
there and on its way back in
toward the vicinity of the
earth and sun. The pieces of
meteoric debris causing
these fireballs may, in
essence, be ‘‘heralding’’ the
arrival of the main body—
the comet.
If the above theory is
valid, it spells more poten-
tial dazzlers in this year’s
Perseid show.
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