If recent events during the last few months are any indicator, Chicken Little may have been right. The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Back on July 24 at approximately 2:44 a.m. EDT, a soccer ball-sized meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere above Lake Ontario and became a bright fireball as it disintegrated. Click here to learn more about this event. Fragments of this “space invader” most likely reached the ground. That same day, at around 11:04 p.m. a similar object was sighted along the east coast from Virginia to Maine. But wait! There’s more. The very next day a previously unknown asteroid estimated to be 187-427 feet across zipped past the Earth at 11:22 a.m., travelling around 45,000 miles per hour. Talk about close encounters!  That one would have wreaked havoc had it collided with the Earth.

There’s a lot of space debris that the Earth passes through on its journey around the Sun. The vast majority are harmless remnants of comets or small pieces of asteroids. Everyday the Earth is bombarded with this material, and with greater frequency security cameras are recording the demise of the brightest of these visitors to our planet. After careful examination of eyewitness accounts, astronomers can determine the orbit of these bodies and determine if they are associated with a particular meteor shower. Two meteor showers were in progress at the time of the fireball reports. Many folks were lucky to view such a “fiery” display.

While the Geminid meteor shower of mid-December reigns supreme as the northern hemisphere’s most productive display of shooting stars, August’s Perseids, coming in a close second,  are the most widely observed meteor shower of the year. Why? Warm temperatures find families spending more time outdoors during the summer season enjoying cookouts, camping, or any other assortment of late evening activities. Normally 60+ green, red or orange Perseids can be observed per hour during peak activity. Unfortunately, for 2019 a waxing gibbous Moon (Full on the 15^th) will severely hamper observing this meteor shower which peaks on the night of August 12-13.

However, while moonlight will wash out all but the brightest meteors before midnight on the night of the 12^th, once the Moon sets around 3:48 a.m. that will leave just over an hour of dark sky observing time before dawn’s early light begins to brighten the sky. Somewhat helpful is the fact that Perseus, the constellation from where the meteors appear to radiate (known as the radiant point), is completely opposite the sky from the Moon. This circumstance could help extend your window of opportunity to an hour or two before the Moon sets! Hey, I’m trying my best to be optimistic here!!