SUBSIDING PERSEIDS: The Perseid meteor shower is subsiding. According to the International Meteor Organization, the shower peaked on August 12th with 140 meteors per hour. Now Earth is exiting the debris stream of Comet Swift Tuttle and rates are dropping back to normal lows: data.
During the peak "we recorded a bright meteor or fireball over the Marshall Space Flight Center every 3 minutes--a fabulous rate," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. This image is a composite of the 130 brightest:
Cooke's meteor detection system consists of two cameras separated by 100 miles--one in Alabama and one in Georgia. The wide baseline allows him to triangulate the trajectory of meteoroids with some accuracy. Here is a map of the Perseids shown above. "Last night, says Cooke, "the stars really did fall on Alabama!"
