Rock fans, rejoice! Space rock, that is, the kind which come plummeting out of the sky and evaporate in a blaze of glory. The annual Perseid Meteor Shower should hit its peak next Wednesday, August 12, between the hours of 1 and 2 a.m. on the Pacific Coast.
That prediction comes from Jeremie Vaubaillon and Mikhail Maslov, as reported by SpaceWeather.com. The veteran forecasters anticipate one of the finest displays in years, with a peak rate of some 180 meteors per hour, or up to 3 per minute.
What’s causing this? Earth is passing through “a filament of comet dust,” according to NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, which got left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle in — hang onto your hats, friends — the year 1610. That filament will serve to augment the “main Perseid debris stream,” said NASA’s Bill Cooke, which itself “may be denser than normal due to gravitational enhancements by Saturn.”
Mankind has watched the Perseids in wonder for more than 2,000 years, and at one point they were known in Europe as the “Tears of St. Lawrence,” a 3rd century saint who is patron of (among other things) Rome, Canada, prostitutes and librarians.