What do you think of this fact?
Tonight is shooting star night. The Perseids are at their peak, and according to NASA you can see up to 100 meteors an hour under a dark sky. The wild part: most of those streaks come from particles no bigger than a grain of sand.
Crumbs from a giant
The Perseids come from a comet called 109P/Swift-Tuttle. It was discovered in 1862 by Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle. It takes 133 years to orbit the Sun once and last visited the inner solar system in 1992.
Along its path, the comet keeps shedding dust. Every August, Earth flies through that dust trail. According to Space.com, most of the particles are the size of grains of sand, some as large as peas or marbles.
The comet itself, on the other hand, is a monster: according to NASA, its nucleus is about 26 kilometers across. Space.com points out that this makes it about twice the size of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Why a grain of sand shines so bright
The reason is speed. The particles hit the atmosphere at about 59 kilometers per second. That’s more than 200,000 kilometers per hour. According to Space.com, they heat up to more than 1650 degrees Celsius and burn up. According to the Max Planck Society, the meteor usually flashes at a height of around 80 kilometers, far above any airplane.
So what you’re seeing isn’t a falling star, but a speck of dust vaporizing in a split second.
The tears of St. Lawrence
In German folk tradition, the Perseids have their own name: “Laurentiustränen”, the tears of St. Lawrence, as the Max Planck Society notes. St. Lawrence’s feast day is August 10, right when the shooting stars are falling.
No need to worry about the big brother: at its next close pass on August 5, 2126, Swift-Tuttle will stay about 23 million kilometers away from Earth, according to Live Science.
So lie down somewhere dark tonight. The comet delivers, you just have to look up.