What time will the August 2009 meteor shower occur and what causes it?”
A few years back I had a wonderful encounter with the Perseid Meteor Shower. One night I was setting up telescopes for a school program, and I saw my very first Earth grazer. This type of meteor hugs the horizon and generally appears early in the evening. They streak brightly and have long colorful tails, which may be visible for several seconds. “Look! Look! Look!” No one could believe they had time to look up and catch sight of the meteor. Usually by the time you say, “look”, the meteor is long gone. Earth grazers aren’t really closer than other meteors, it is an optical illusion because they appear close to the horizon. I have never seen such a beautiful, long-lived meteor. For the sake of clarity, a meteor is the streak of light a meteoroid produces as it travels through the Earth’s atmosphere. The Perseid meteor shower is compliments of comet Swift-Tuttle. As this comet approaches the Sun, it heats up, causing the surface of the comet to sublimate. Instead of the surface of the co
