August 12
Perseid Night
Sun Position
The Sun is in late Leo at approximately +14° declination. At northern mid-latitudes, darkness falls around 9 PM local time, late enough to catch the shower's peak after midnight.
Sky Highlight
The Perseid meteor shower peaks annually around August 12-13, producing 100 or more meteors per hour under ideal conditions, swift, bright streaks that often leave luminous trains. Meteors appear to radiate from Perseus but can appear anywhere in the sky. Northern Hemisphere observers have the best view; Southern Hemisphere observers see reduced rates with the radiant low in the north. This is the most reliably active and widely observed annual shower.
Deep Sky Object
The Double Cluster in Perseus, NGC 869 and NGC 884, makes an ironic companion object on Perseid night, the radiant of the shower sits only a few degrees from this naked-eye cluster, meaning every Perseid appears to streak away from a pair of star clouds roughly 7,000 light-years deep. Worth keeping in the field of view.
Featured Star
Vega, the A0Va main-sequence star in Lyra, lies just 25 light-years away and blazes near the zenith for northern mid-latitude observers on August nights, making it the natural bright anchor for following meteor trains across the sky. It was the first star ever captured in a photograph, in 1850 at the Harvard College Observatory.
Around This Date
- August 12, 1877Asaph Hall discovered Deimos from the US Naval Observatory, marking the first confirmed detection of a Martian moon after decades in which Mars was assumed to have none.
- August 12, 1960NASA launched Echo 1A, a 100-foot aluminized balloon satellite that became the first successful passive communications satellite, reflecting radio signals between ground stations and visible to the naked eye as it orbited.
On Perseid night, the sky above is doing something ancient and regular and briefly spectacular, find a dark field and just lie down.