The yearly Perseid meteor shower actually peaked in the wee time of Weekend, Aug. 12, offering a stunning heavenly light display for stargazers fortunate enough to have black air and obvious climate for the occasion.
"We saw some capturing celebrities in The Hague, Netherlands," stargazer Jocelyn Jackson informed SPACE.com in an e-mail these days. "Super cool!"
The Perseid meteor bath has been noticed by people for at least 2,000 decades. It happens each season in delayed September and beginning Aug when the World goes through a pathway of dirt and ice from the comet Swift-Tuttle. This dirty trash jams into Global environment at more than 130,000 mph and uses up up, developing the fantastic meteors seen by experts.
From the floor, the Perseids appear to show out of the constellation Perseus, hence their name.
A ideal Perseids night
While Jackson did not deliver in images of the Perseid meteors over Netherlands, many other experts did. In Florida, evening sky viewer Saying Senin recognized his first obvious Perseid meteor bath after decades of efforts.
"It was an almost perfect night for Perseids observations, with temperatures in the high 70s and 80s," Senin wrote in an email. "It was a night anyone could stay out for hours, and even sleep outside."
Senin's photo shows a Perseid visible over the Los Angeles National Forest just north of Castaic. The meteor shines through the haze of lights from Los Angeles in the distance, which appear brighter than they actually were due to Senin's long exposure time.
Senin said he was with a group of 50 stargazers organized by the Los Angeles Sidewalk Astronomers club hoping to see the Perseids. He saw at least 20 bright Perseids during the night.
"In the beginning everyone was cheering and 'oooo'-ing for each meteor they saw, but there were so many after a while people stopped the oooos for the faint and short ones," Senin said.
Other meteor shower observers sent in photos from more remote locales.
In the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa, veteran astrophotographer Roberto Porto had his spot all picked out on Tenerife, but was concerned that an island dust storm (called a Calima) might hamper his night sky view. Those fears, he said, turned out to be unfounded.
"The dark sky of Mount Teide National Park gave [us] a few hours ago this beautiful image: a bright Perseid meteor over the Arch known as the Zapata da la Reina (Queen's Show) and the Milky Way," Porto said.
SPACE.com also received photos of the 2012 Perseid meteor shower from across the United States, as well as from observers in Finland, Spain and Hungary. Late Saturday night, NASA held an all-night webchat to broadcast live views of the Perseids for those stargazers who weren't graced with clear skies.
Astronomer Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office led the webchat. His team anticipated seeing up to 100 meteors an hour (under the best observing conditions) during the Perseids peak.
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