Look up tonight.
You just might happen to see one of nature's most stunning light displays.
The perate meteor shower will reach its peak this weekend and the showers will streak across the sky and one of the year's most anticipated celestial displays.
And here to help us make sure you don't miss a thing is Janet Ivey, she is the president of Explore Mars Janet.
I could see you smiling even as I was introducing the topic so clearly you're very excited about it.
Great to have you first.
Can you just help us understand what these are and what makes them so special seeing them?
Sure.
The source of the proceed shower is comet swift tuttle and they're basically fragments of this comet which orbits between the sun and beyond the orbit of Pluto once every 133 years, which again sounds crazy, but the comet sheds bits of material every time it returns near the sun and this debris keeps traveling along the comets orbital path, creating kind of a river of rubble.
And every year the earth passes near this path of the comet and basically the debris left behind by swift tidal shows up as Meteors in our sky.
And tonight we're gonna pass through the densest part of that river of rubble and we should be seeing about 50 to 100 Meteors per hour tonight.
So, Janet, what, what will it look like then?
And, and when and how should we be looking up?
So, what you want to do is find a great, if you don't know where the constellation perseus or uh Shiia is uh find a great app like Sky Guide or Sky map.
Any of those great apps that can help you locate it.
And all you have to do is look up.
The best time is going to be pretty much any time after 11 pm, 12 a.m. be between and until 4 a.m. Sunday morning.
And it's going to look as if they're actually coming or emanating from the perseus constellation.
But actually, again, it's just from our perspective, if you want to kind of see longer streams and trails look about halfway away and that we'll see them broadside on.
But tonight is the best night.
If nature cooperates, I know a lot of places may be under cloud cover or rain.
Uh Never fear the virtual telescope project uh can be streamed at space dot com.
Um But even in the next few nights, we're have a waning crescent.
So that means the moon is only gonna be eliminated by about 8%.
So we're three days away from a new moon.
So if you don't happen to catch it tonight because of weather or clouds, you still have a few more days to look up.
But tonight is going to be the most brilliant display.
Those kind of bits of, kind of like tiny grains of sand and pebbles are gonna be striking the earth's atmosphere at a speed of about 40 miles to 60 kilometers per second.
And they're gonna create an incredible incandescent light show for us.
Speaking of show, Janet who's gonna have the best seat at the show?
I mean, if you are in the city, I imagine you're probably gonna be dealing with some light pollution.
I mean, where do you get the best uh seat if you can get out into the country into the darkest part of the sky where there's little light pollution?
I know that's often hard anymore in our world.
But if you can get to the darkest place possible, and again, we have a little bit of luck on our side because of that waning crescent and the moon won't be so bright in our sky, but go to the darkest place.
The other thing to do is kind of like turn off all of your kind of like phone, any kind of other light source so your eyes can really adjust to the night sky and that'll give you an even better way to view, you know, put down the binoculars.
This is something all you gotta do is just look up.
So you know, I, I I'm gonna have to face time you or something.
You're gonna have to hand me your, your cell phone number, Janet because my daughter, my five year old is gonna want to see this and she's gonna have a million questions and I'm gonna say, I don't know the answer to that, but I've got Janet for you.
So uh I'll have to give your number later, Janet any time.
And again, you and your daughter might be the next mother daughter combo to go to space just like that beautiful Caribbean family just went to space on Virgin galactic.
So yeah, keep uh, keep looking up with your daughter.
That was really cool to see and Janet Ivey, really cool to have you today.
I've learned so much about Percy and hopefully everyone at home did too.
Thank you, Janet Ivey.
You sounded like a pro, by the way you were saying Percy it, I'm like, oh, clearly Rahel knows what that is.
See in a bit.