Best Pictures of Perseids Meteor Shower
"Falling Stars"
LOOK! right there by your feet...
A fallen star and it's all yours.
Once resting softly in it's place,
then with the blink of an eye,
it slowly began to loose it's strength....
lower, lower, and still lower it falls....
the BAMMM!!! there it is resting beside you.
A fallen star and it's all yours.
Once resting softly in it's place,
then with the blink of an eye,
it slowly began to loose it's strength....
lower, lower, and still lower it falls....
the BAMMM!!! there it is resting beside you.
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| view from Mojave Photograph by Wally Pacholka, TWAN |
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| view from Armenia
Photograph by Oshin D. Zakarian, TWAN
|
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| view from Canada Photograph by Darryl Van Gaal |
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| view from Japan Photograph by Yuga Kurita, |
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| view from Hungary Photograph by Peter Komka, European Pressphoto Agency |
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| view from Quebec Photograph by Michel Tournay |
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| view from China Photograph by Jeff Dai |
Every summer about this time of year, the Earth passes through the
orbital path of the Swift-Tuttle comet. That might sound a little
alarming, but don’t worry—the closest we’re likely to come to the comet
itself will be 1 million miles, and astronomers calculate that won’t be
until 3044. (Still, a near miss by cosmic standards.) But bits and
pieces that have broken off from the tail of the comet do collide with
the Earth’s atmosphere, creating one of the most reliable and
spectacular star shows of the year: the Perseid meteor shower, so called
because the meteors, as they streak across the sky, seem to originate
from the constellation Perseus.
This year the shower was intense, with as many as 100 separate shooting stars—cosmic matter burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere—tearing across the sky per minute. (An average meteor shower might have as few as one shooting stars per minute.) The Perseid meteor shower has been observed for some 2,000 years. Catholics used to call the shower the “tears of St. Lawrence,” since the martyred saint’s feast day of Aug. 10 often coincided with the show.
2013′s meteor shower has been particularly impressive because the
lunar calendar ensured that the moon had all but disappeared from the
sky during peak viewing hours. Of course, those of us who live in cities
and near other sources of light pollution won’t be able to make out the
full power of the Perseid shower—assuming you can stay up late enough
to see it. But the images that follow give you a taste of what you might
be missing.
*pictures thankfully shared from 'National Geographic'/13th July 2013
*poem 'Falling Stars' thankfully shared from 'Timothy Sides'
*text courtesy:http://science.time.com
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