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.

Praise for the Starman of Mitzpe Ramon

…you were the highlight of our trip to the Negev. I was worried that a two hour plus astronomy talk would be a step too far....but it was truly fantastic and loved by us all. Was sorry when it ended. It is a must for all - you are a STAR man on many fronts.

C.K., April 2017

Fabulous program. Thank you so much!

H.B., April 2017

Starry starry night

Having Ira as our guide for the stars was a privilege. He turned our night tour into an unforgettable experience where we could witness falling stars, constellations and planets. He is fun, patience, smart, kind and very kind. We learned a whole lot about the sky, the stars, and about ourselves. It was a fantastic -and musical- experience!

Aryeh, Tel Aviv, August 6, 2017

Venus, Mars and Saturn Above Mitzpe Ramon

Venus, Mars and Saturn have been putting on quite a show in the July and August skies, the three planets dancing around each other with closest approach occurring on the night of August 8, the three then fitting within a 5 degree circle.

You don't need fancy astronomical equipment to capture the beauty of this spectacle to look back on or share with your friends. I took the photos below from various places in Mitzpe Ramon using a simple pocket digital camera and tripod. Almost everyone has a digital camera these days, and if you are interested in astronomy a good tripod is a must, sooner or later, whether for sky photos or small telescopes or a binocular.



There is lots of advice for buying telescopes on line, but not much for tripods. Without giving it a review, I will just state that the little-known Tiltall Tripod, which used to carry the Leica imprint, is the best small tripod I have ever used, bar none. It is simple, very strong, light weight and fool proof. Just get it. You won't be sorry. And it's just $99. You could spend $500+ and not get a better one.

The most important feature for a pocket digital camera for night sky photography is a manual setting for focus, aperture, and length of exposure. Lacking this, you can frequently make do by setting the auto-exposure to underexpose by at least two stops. The night sky easily fools auto-exposure systems into over-exposing the scene, since the auto-exposure algorithm wants to make a very dark scene as bright as day. Some pocket digital cameras have a "scene mode" that includes a "Night Sky" choice, but I find that even this tends to over expose the sky and stars. With no manual focus you will have to focus on some object in the distance and then recompose to properly frame the scene. I find this to be the biggest draw back for pocket digital cameras that don't have manual focus.



I use the Leica D-Lux 4, but this is exactly the same camera as the more affordably priced Panasonic DMC-LX3, both of which I highly recommend as affordable, very capable pocket digital cameras for night sky photography.

Short exposures at ISO settings of 400 and a length of time of under 60 seconds work well. This time interval is short enough so that the stars do not trail badly, but still makes stars and nebulae bright enough to see, I use Google's free Picasa photo editing software to put the final touches on my photos, including labels if so desired. It's free and very easy to use.





My first photo for the Venus-Mars-Saturn apparition was taken on August 5 at 7:52 PM in the field across the street from the Cafeneto. Here the three planets appear as an isosceles triangle, with Saturn at tthe apex.

ISO 200, f5, 20 sec. Zaniah and Zavijava are stars in the  constellation Virgo. Spica is the brightest star in Virgo. Three nights later on August 8, when the planets were closest together, they form a  right angle, Venus having moved beneath Saturn, and the distance between Mars  and Saturn having somewhat widened. This photo was taken in front of the Machtesh Ramon Visitor Center, with the town of Mitzpe Ramon, including its iconic water  tower, below.

ISO 200, f2.8, 13 sec. One night later, on August 9, I moved to the dark skies of the high desert near the  Alpaca Farm, to capture this view of the planets at 8:33 PM. Now the three planets  form almost an isosceles triangle, with the apex, Venus, at the bottom.

ISO 200, f5, 15 sec.

Tonight, August 10, the three planets formed an almost perfect isosceles triangle.
The photo below was also taken in the high desert by the Alpaca Farm, just a
5 minute drive outside of Mitzpeh Ramon. The Alpaca Farm sits in a hidden valley
behind Mitzpe Ramon, whose sodium vapor lights' glow can still be seen from
here, along with some random lights from the farm. Despite this, I can easily see
5th magnitude stars from the Alpaca Farm, and the Milky Way is a splendid cartwheel
over head and down into Sagittarius and Scorpio.

ISO 400, f2.5, 15 sec.

Above we see the beautiful hills of the high desert around Mitzpe Ramon during late dusk,
around 8:30 PM. The celestial trio will continue putting on its show throughout August.
Go outside and watch, and see what you can capture with your digital camera and tripod.
On the night of August 12 you will also be able to see the Perseids meteor shower,
the best and most reliable of the year. We are in for some real celestial treats this week.

Mitzpe Ramon is a beautiful place for doing astronomy.

Joint us, won't you?