Celestial fireworks thrill stargazers
● Spectacular show as Earth flies through Perseid meteor shower
Skygazers were treated to a spectacular display of celestial fireworks overnight as the Earth flew through a cloud of cometary dust.
The Perseid meteors, shed by comet Swift-tuttle, put on a show every August and are among the brightest of all shooting stars.
A clear sky gave people in most parts of the UK an opportunity to spot the meteors, said Met Office forecaster Marco Petagna.
He said: “There were some good cloud breaks, so many areas would have had a good chance to see them during the early hours. It would have been pretty good viewing.”
The meteor shower lit up the sky near Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park while spectacular views were also visible above Gargunnock in Stirlingshire.
Professor Richard Betts, from the Met Office Hadley Centre, tweeted late on Saturday night: “(East Devon, UK) four in space of 15 minutes, sadly clouding over now.”
The meteors, mostly no bigger than a grain of sand, burn up as they hit the atmosphere to produce a shooting stream of light in the sky.
Seen from the Earth, the Perseids appear to originate from one place in the northeast known as the “radiant” which happens to be near the constellation Perseus.
Because the density of the dust cloud varies, the meteors are not evenly spaced out. At certain times they can be close together and at others seem to disappear.
The Perseids were the first meteor shower to be linked to a comet when astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli spotted their association with Swifttuttle in 1862.
The comet orbits the Sun every 135 years. As the Earth crosses its orbit, it ploughs through some of the debris left by the icy object on previous visits. None of the particles is big enough to avoid destruction and reach the ground.
Robin Scagell, vice president of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said that, while the display peaked on Saturday, the official limit is 20 August. He said: “For the next few days you could expect to see some but decreasing numbers all the time.”