NORTH SOUND, AUG. 11: The summer months offer a great time to view the night sky. This week, there is rare opportunity to view a nighttime double-header, the unique alignment of six planets and the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.
Thanks to clear skies in the coming days, you can see a unique planetary event set to align in the night sky until the final days of the month. Six planets will all be lined up. The planets include Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; the latter two will need binoculars or a telescope to be seen. The others will all be visible to the naked eye.
The best time to view this exceptional event is during the early morning prior to sunrise in the eastern sky.
This “Planet Parade,” as some call it, is rather rare. Yet, this planet positioning will be the second time this year, the first occurring in January. From Earth’s perspective, the six planets will not form a perfectly straight line, yet they will appear close together.
So, if you want to see this distinctive planetary orientation, look to the eastern sky before sunrise until the end of August.
According to NASA, Earth’s rotation around the sun carries the planet through the Perseids meteor stream each year during the period of about July 17 through August 24. The peak period to see the meteor shower occurs during the period of August 11 through 14.
Weatherwise, skies should remain clear during nighttime hours into the middle of the week, allowing great viewing of the meteor shower after sundown. The best time to see the surge of meteors in the night sky is between midnight and dawn.
No special equipment is needed. Just find a wide-open sky and, even better, away from city lights. Your eyes may take up to 20 minutes to adapt to the dark. Perseid meteors will start to be seen hitting the planet’s atmosphere in the mid-to-late evening hours, peaking toward dawn.
In a dark sky, you may see up to 100 meteors per hour. Hang in there for at least an hour since the meteors tend to come in bursts interspersed with lulls. The Perseid meteors are traced to the constellation Perseus, in honor of Perseus the Hero. In ancient Greek lore, Perseus is the son of the god Zeus and the mortal Danaë. The Perseid shower commemorates the time when Zeus visited Danaë, the mother of Perseus, in a shower of gold. Quite the love story!
There is no threat of the meteors reaching the Earth’s surface. The meteors are quite small and burn up about 60 miles above Earth’s surface, leaving wonderful streaks of light across the night sky.
