Perseids Meteor Shower 2020 in Israel

The Perseids Meteor Shower peaks on the night of August 12 - early morning August 13 this year and every year. On a favorable year 60-75 meteors per hour can be seen during peak hours. 2020 is a mixed year for seeing the shower, partly because a last quarter moon rises at midnight and partly because of Coronavirus restrictions.

Peak hours are after midnight when the radiant of the shower rises higher into the sky and when the earth is turning into the meteor stream. A bright moon, which rises at midnight this August 12-13, considerably reduces the number of meteors seen since many meteors are dim. The moon is kind of like nature's light pollution. Nevertheless, the hours of dark before the moon rises should still be quite good. 

The meteors appear to emanate from a single location in the sky which gives the shower its name. This location is called the "radiant". 

Perhaps the most complicating factor this year is Coronavirus restrictions limiting groups to 20 in number. Because of Mitzpe Ramon's dark skies and the star parties sponsored by the town there are usually thousands of people who come to Mitzpe Ramon for the peak night. That obviously doesn't work well this year. All guided activities require a reservation and groups are being kept small. If you come without a reservation for an activity you are on your own for finding a dark location and observing. Many guides in Mitzpe will be doing their own scaled down tours throughout the week. You can find almost all on TripAdvisor. On many years Mitzpe Ramon has turned off all the city lights to make the area dark everywhere. It is not doing so this year.

If you come on your own the Machtesh will be open for star gazing and meteor watching at this location as well as all the campgrounds in the Crater. https://www.parks.org.il/reserve-park/ramon/

The Machtesh is enormous, some 29 miles x 6 miles and can accommodate thousands of people. 

This is your best bet for self-guided meteor gazing.

While my tour on the night of August 12 is booked, other nights around that date are still available. You can book one here:

The Israel Space Association is offering free activities in Mitzpe August 8-13. Reservations are required. All I know about them is at this link: https://www.space.gov.il/activities-and-events/132025

You can obviously go to any dark sky location in Israel to view the meteor shower. I am not familiar with them but the Judean Desert, the Galil, and the Golan come to mind. Har Hatayasim nature reserve close to Jerusalem is a good candidate in the Mercaz. The devil is in the details which I don't know from lack of personal experience. 

The nights around the peak of the shower are also excellent for observing, you just don't see as many meteors. 

HOW TO VIEW THE PERSEIDS METEOR SHOWER

You don't have to come to Mitzpe Ramon to view the meteor shower. All you need is a dark sky with an open horizon. Just sit back or lie on the ground and look up. Watch the skies with your naked eye. No optical equipment required. While you can watch in any direction, looking east if you can't look straight up, is usually best, as that is the direction the radiant of the shower rises in the constellation Perseus, which gives the Perseids its name.

BOTTOM LINE:

The nights of August 10-August 15 are best for viewing this year's Perseids Meteor Shower. The peak night is August 12-13. A bright, waning, last quarter moon will interfere with seeing the dimmer members of the shower after midnight, which will considerably reduce the hourly rate. The nights of August  10,11, 13, 14 and 15 may be a good compromise between intensity and darkness for viewers of the shower. The moon rises about 45 minutes later each night after August 12. Check the forecast for haze on the nights of August 11-15. Haze combined with a bright moon do not make for good meteor viewing.

METEOR, METEORITE, METEOROID:

Meteors are what most people call "shooting stars" or "falling stars", but they are neither. They are bits of rock and debris from outer space that fall to earth and burn up from the heat of friction with the earth's atmosphere. It's their light generated by friction with the earth's atmosphere that we see. Usually these rocks from space just fall randomly so we only see a few per night. But sometimes the earth passes through the orbit of an ancient comet, which disintegrates as it orbits the sun and leaves a debris trail behind. As the earth passes through this cometary debris trail scores of particles fall to earth simultaneously creating a meteor shower. Really good showers like the Perseids can have peak rates in excess of 100 meteors per hour. Of course most of these are quite dim, but many bright ones are also visible creating "Ooohs" and "Ahhhs" from the onlookers. The Perseid Meteor Shower results from debris left behind by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, whichh has a period of 133 years. It's last perihelion passage was December 11, 1992, so it won't be back for a while.

As the earth passes through  the orbit of an ancient comet debris rains down on our planet creating a meteor shower.

Most meteors are quite tiny, minuscule even, about the size of a grain of sand. Of course, we don't  see an object that small in the sky, we just see the tremendous light generated as they burn up from friction. They begin to become visible at heights of around 50 miles to 175 miles high. But sometimes enormous objects fall to earth. Most recently the Great Chelyabinsk Meteor fell to earth on February 15, 2013, over the town of Chelyabinsk Russia. It was 60 feet in diameter and weighed over 12,000 tons when it entered the earth's atmosphere at a speed in excess of 100,000 MPH. It was the largest meteor to fall to earth in over 100 years and was captured by numerous dashboard cameras. I put together a compendium of the videos on YouTube, and it is one of the most dramatic astronomical events of recent memory.  It is worth watching.  https://youtu.be/JB2eoQfOGBA

If meteors are large enough they can survive their fiery fall through the earth's atmosphere and hit the ground, as the Chelyabinsk Meteor did. They then change their name to meteorites and can be found, collected and researched. They are primordial pieces of the solar system, over 4 billion years old. The object while still in the sky is called a meteoroid.

I am often asked how much better the peak night is than the nights around it. Here's a graph of meteor frequency against the peak and the days around it. Of course this is the total number of meteors it is possible to see. We can't see them all since we can't see the whole sky at once and many are too dim to see under the sky conditions that may prevail. 

Meteor frequency against days of the month on and around the peak of the shower

Go out and enjoy the sky. Stay safe by observing Coronavirus restrictions.

Two Meteor Showers Peak at the End of July

The Alpha Capricornids and the Delta Aquariids Meteor Showers both peak at the end of July. While these minor meteor showers usually play second fiddle to the much more intense Perseids Meteor Shower which peaks on August 12, the nearly full moon will interfere with viewing the Perseids this year. So these two Meteor Showers at the end of July may be your best chance to enjoy the “shooting stars” this year.

Delta Aquariids

Last night (July 29) We saw about a dozen meteors, maybe more, during the two hours of our star tour. You need a dark skyand an open horizon to see them best. Just lie down on a comfy blanket or lounge and look straight up. They can appear anywhere in the sky. They are usually best seen after midnight, but last night we had the best show between sunset and 11:30 PM. 

Astronomy Projects for Children this Fall

The main spectacle in the night sky this summer and on into winter has been the presence of (at times) all 5 of the naked eye planets in the sky simultaneously. Right now there are “only” 4 as Mercury has moved into the dawn sky, but I can’t remember ever seeing so many naked eye planets simultaneously in all my years of observing. Starting at sunset, around 8:00pm, from West to East, you can see brilliant Venus setting, bright Jupiter high in the sky, Saturn culminating at the Meridian, and brilliant red Mars rising high in the east. The contrasting colors of creamy white Venus setting and red Mars rising are especially striking. See here for photos are more information: 

http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/visible-planets-tonight-mars-jupiter-venus-saturn-mercury

Since these are all bright naked eye planets all you need is your own eyes to observe them. They will be in the sky through September (all 4) with their slow change with the seasons and their motion around the sun. 

Many projects for children are possible. The night sky is very colorful. See if you can detect the color differences in the planets. It’s one way to identify them. 

The planets also move through the sky as they orbit the sun. The word “planet” in Greek means wanderer. See if you can detect the motion of the planets as they “wander” against the background of “fixed stars” of the constellations of the Zodiac. Using a star map try to identify these constellations and their pictures in the night sky. If you go out regularly you can draw your own star map and trace the path of the planets. See if any stop and move backwards in the sky (from east to west) called retrograde motion. This used to blow the minds of ancient astronomers because it was hard to explain. 

If you have a pair that of binoculars or small telescope you should be able to see some of the 4 (bright) moons of Jupiter. You can watch them change position from night to night as they orbit the planet. A miniature solar system! Try drawing their positions the way Galileo did 408 years ago! He discovered them as the first person to observe the sky with a telescope and record his observations. You can be a 21st century Galileo!

These planets will be in the sky for most of the fall and are the main spectacle of fall nights. 

Finally, in December the Geminids meteor shower peaks on the night of December 13. Quoting from my calendar: “Planning on staying up late (or waking up early) for this one. The Geminids is the "king" of the meteor showers. It is considered by many to be the best shower in the heavens, producing up to 120 multicolored meteors per hour at its peak. It is produced by debris left behind by an asteroid known as 3200 Phaethon, which was discovered in 1982. The shower runs annually from December 7-17. It peaks this year on the night of the 13th and morning of the 14th. The first quarter moon will set shortly after midnight leaving dark skies for what should be an excellent early morning show. Best viewing will be from a dark location after midnight. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Gemini, but can appear anywhere in the sky. “

Dusseldorf Comes to Mitzpe Ramon

We went out tonight with a nice group of three couples from Dusseldorf, Germany. The temperature and wind again conspired to keep us quite cold, as you can see in the photo below. The moon is waxing full, so we are getting close to Pesach.

There is almost always something unexpected to see in the night sky. Tonight we saw a sudden bright light in the sky, probably a satellite winking overhead, and saw a marvelous, bright meteor that lit up the entire ground around us. It burned red and was gone in a flash, probably a meteor made of iron considering its color. It also gave off some sparks as it shot toward earth. I wish I could order those up on demand, but it's pretty much just the luck of the draw with meteors.

After two hours under the desert sky we were all quite cold and so scurried home, I to a warm bed, an unusual place for me to end up so early, but I was tired from all of the Pesach shopping we had done earlier in the day in Beer-Sheva.

Our Dusseldorf guests

And remember to Keep on lookin' up!

A Jewish Geography Moment

It happens so often that I hate to bring it up. I'm sure a statistician could explain why it isn't uncommon. We had a Jewish Geography Moment last week at Astronomy Israel. We met Leslie Weinberg and her daughter Sharon (and Sharon's boy friend Ariel) at Chez Eugene to go up for an astronomy tour. As I discovered on the phone before we met in person, Pam (my wife) was good friends with Leslie's mother and father who, among other things, had helped found the nursery school at the Tenafly, NJ JCC where Pam was the 2-year old director for many years before we moved to Israel. (Was that too hard to follow?) In any case, Pam insisted on my giving Leslie a card for her Mom, together with a soap made in Mitzpe Ramon's own soap factory, all packaged in a tidy little brown bag with handles, which made me laugh at Pam because who has room for such things in their suitcase? However, the joke was on me since Leslie's suitcase was empty as she had just brought a bag full of goodies to her daughter who had recently moved to Israel.

The point of all this is that we already had the basis of a relationship before we even met, so we had a rollicking good time on the plateau where I take our guests. Just by chance, it was night in which we saw many sporadic meteors and random satellites. This is always a thrill and resulted in a contest between Leslie and Sharon to see who could count the most. This is when I keep reminding our guests to "keep on looking up". You can't see anything if you're not watching the sky. I think Sharon trounced her mom, or perhaps my memory fails me. In any case, it got so heated that they began accusing one another of cheating. What fun!

Sharon, Ariel, and Leslie Weinberg on site with Astronomy Israel.

Sharon's beau, Ariel, came up with one of the best back handed complements I have ever heard. Being familiar with Hubble Telescope photos he said, upon looking through my 4" refractor, "I will lower my expectations to increase my pleasure." A rather wry comment that got a good laugh from us all and an admonition from me that he might not want that sentiment to linger in the mind of his possible future mother-in-law.

Keep on looking up!