Perseid meteor shower

This photograph of a Perseid meteor was taken last August in Rapid City, South Dakota. An aurora added to the light show.

By Mark Davis
CNN

(CNN) -- Curious folks in La Vergne, Tennessee, will begin gathering August 10 on the slight hill at Veterans Memorial Park, coming together not long after daylight fades and a quarter moon rises over the park's hardwoods.

Adults, children, strangers, friends -- they'll bring blankets and food and things to drink. Some will grasp binoculars; others will pack telescopes.

They'll all bring wide eyes for one of nature's greatest shows.

The Perseid meteor shower, an event that comes around every August in the late-night sky, is upon us again. Lasting for more than a week, the celestial show is forecast to peak on August 12, when astronomers say meteors should streak through the dark every two minutes or so.

That's not as bright a display as in years past -- the quarter moon may be too brilliant for some meteors to stand out, astronomers caution -- but that doesn't mean stargazers will be wasting their time.

"That's still a wonderful meteor shower and I recommend trying to see it," said George Lebo, an astronomy professor who is a visiting faculty member this summer at the NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

August 12 should be the zero hour for best watching, Lebo said in a news release from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "No matter where you live, the best time to watch will between local midnight and dawn."

'Meteors flew thither'

The shower is hardly a recent phenomenon. Chinese sky-watchers were the first to record a barrage of nocturnal streaking lights more than 2,000 years ago, according to astronomers and various Web sites devoted to the Perseids. "More than 100 meteors flew thither in the morning," a nameless scribe wrote one day in A.D. 36. In subsequent centuries, Chinese, Japanese and Korean record keepers mentioned meteor showers, too.

Europeans also noted the meteors hundreds of years ago, and some believed they truly were heavenly, according to an account of the Perseids in Sky & Telescope magazine. Calling the yearly event "the tears of St. Lawrence," devout Catholics in Western Europe thought the meteors honored Lawrence, a martyr whom the Romans killed in August 258. The annual August lights were his fiery tears, they said.

A more rational explanation is credited to three separate sky-watchers, the magazine reports.

A Belgian scientist, an observant fellow named Adolphe Quetelet, in 1835 reported the occurrence each August of meteors emanating from the constellation Perseus, hence the name "Perseids." At about the same time, diligent stargazers in the United States -- Edward C. Herrick, a New Haven, Connecticut, bookstore clerk, and John Locke, a girls'-school headmaster in Cincinnati, Ohio -- derived the same conclusion. Each claimed at least partial credit for determining that the meteor show was more than a random event.

A comet's tail

The Perseids, which have varied in intensity and frequency over the years, are bits of space dust that enter the Earth's atmosphere at 132,000 mph, creating eye-popping streaks of light in the night sky.

They originate from the tail of the comet Swift-Tuttle, a heavenly visitor that hurtles past our sun every 135 years, leaving a new trail of debris in its wake. The Earth, revolving around the sun, routinely approaches the celestial flotsam and jetsam every July. Astronomers note an increase in meteor activity almost immediately.

Back on Earth, Ed Johnson of Garner, North Carolina, is anticipating that increase. He's organized a Perseids party for August 11.

"We'll all get our chairs and blankets and lie down and check it out," said Johnson, who oversees recreation facilities and projects for Garner, a town of 20,000 residents just east of Raleigh. He began planning a meteor viewing at a park west of town after his children, 8-year-old Miranda and Ned, 6, expressed interest in the heavens.

So far, only a few have signed up to see attend, but Johnson expects more to join the party. After all, this is a really big show.

"This is an opportunity," he said. "People can learn about something that is bigger than they are."