APOD: Perseid Prelude (2010 Aug 12)

[APOD Robot]

Perseid Prelude

Explanation: Each August, as planet Earth swings through dust trailing along the orbit of periodic comet Swift-Tuttle, skygazers can enjoy the Perseids Meteor Shower. The shower should build to its peak now, best seen from later tonight after moonset, until dawn tomorrow morning when Earth moves through the denser part of the wide dust trail. But shower meteors have been spotted for many days, like this bright Perseid streaking through skies near Lake Balaton, Hungary on August 8. In the foreground is the region's Church of St. Andrew ruin, with bright Jupiter dominating the sky to its right. Two galaxies lie in the background of the wide-angle, 3 frame panorama; our own Milky Way's luminous arc, and the faint smudge of the more distant Andromeda Galaxy just above the ruin's leftmost wall. If you watch for Perseid meteors tonight, be sure and check out the early evening sky show too, featuring bright planets and a young crescent Moon near the western horizon after sunset.

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[owlice]

Otto Posterman beat me to it!

Congratulations to Tamas for his lovely image! I'm going to leave it in the Recent Submissions thread even though Otto outran me this time.

For those who are taking pictures of the Perseids, please submit your images on this thread. Thank you!

[mexhunter]

A beautiful image, that deservedly is APOD and is published in addition in SpaceWeather.com, today too.
Many greetings
César

[orin stepanek]

hopefully the sky will be clear tonight!

[León]

Complete with information extracted from http://www.oarval.org/perseids.htm
One of the most prolific meteor showers is the Perseids. The radiant is in the constellation Perseus, and meteors from this shower can be seen over a period of about 3 weeks centered on August 12. In good years up to 70 meteors an hour can be seen near the peak.
This meteor stream is associated with Comet Swift-Tuttle, which passed close by the Sun in 1992.
As the meteors in the stream are thought to be dust particles released from the comet, it is thought likely that there is a dense stream of such particles in the path of the comet and located close to it.
The last time (1993) that the Earth passed through the comet's orbit just after the comet had been close to the Sun, there was a radical increase in the number of meteors seen, rising to about 300 an hour. It is thus likely that when the Earth passes through the comet's path on August 12, there may be a very high peak in the number of meteors seen.
The peak could well be only an hour long, and the exact time of the Earth passing through the maximum is only poorly known, and so it will be worth keeping a lookout from about midnight onwards, always assuming that the skies are clear!

As a prelude to propose the following overture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY4lqgqhujg

[biddie67]

With a chuckle and a salute to Leon for tonight when I'm sitting out in the back yard in my lawn chair, staring at the sky. The two dogs will be enjoying their unusual midnight adventure while The Lone Ranger, Tonto and I will raise our wine glasses in appreciation as each meteor streaking by overhead stirs up the strains of that wonderful overture!!

[biddie67]

P.S. congrats to Tamas Ladanyi for a beautiful photograph!!!

[neufer]

<<Tihany is famous for the echo, existing since the 18th century. There were poems written for this echo, like by Mihály Csokonai Vitéz and Mihály Vörösmarty, but the most famous is by János Garay, summing up the legend of the place. The echo has since abated, due to changes in the landscape. The other part of the legend concerns with the "goats' nails", washed ashore from Balaton, which are in fact corners of prehistoric clams. According to the story, there was a princess [Esther ] with golden-haired goats, but she was too proud and hard of heart and was punished (cursed by the king of the lake): her goats were lost in Balaton, only their nails remained, and she was obliged to answer to every passers-by. A stone, remembering the Shouting Girl, is still to be seen near the village.>>