Don't miss the perseid meteor shower tonight! This August 2009 meteor shower time will start about 1:00am AEST tomorrow and will last for a few hours. According to skyandtelescope.com:
This year's standard Perseid peak is predicted to come around 18h Universal Time (2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time) on August 12th. That's good timing for the Far East, but for North America it splits the difference between the nights of August 11-12 and 12-13. Flip a coin — or watch the evening weather forecast — to decide which night to watch for them. The shower is also active to a lesser degree for many days beforehand and several days afterward.
The waning Moon is nearly at last quarter those two nights. It rises an hour or two after dark and will brighten the sky somewhat during the best Perseid-activity hours, from 11 p.m. until dawn. Nevertheless, this is a pretty reliable shower, and some Perseids should be there for the catching.
Moreover, meteor specialists Esko Lyytinen and Mikhail Maslov suggest we may encounter a ribbon of very old debris (ejected by the comet in 1610) on the morning of August 12th near 9h UT (4 a.m. CDT; 2 a.m. PDT). This could up the count for an hour or so. Both researchers also think that Earth's proximity to the stream's core might produce an additional surge four hours earlier, around 5h UT (1 a.m. EDT).
