Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Thursday, August 11th.  The sun rises at 6:40.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 14 minutes, setting at 8:54.   The moon, 2 days before full, will set at 5:31 tomorrow morning.

In the next two nights the Perseid meteor shower will be at a peak.  The problem this year will be that the moon is full, or full enough that the skies will not be dark all night.  Hope is not completely lost, because there will be a few really bright meteors, a few an hour, rather than the 50 or more an hour visible in dark skies.  The paths of meteors appear longer in the evening where the radiant point of the meteors lies low in the north northeast, when the bits of rock skip through our atmosphere at a very low angle.  These bits of rock were liberated by comet Swift Tuttle on a prior pass of the inner solar system.  It orbits the sun in 130 years, and its path takes it very close to the orbit of the earth, so this time of year we pass through its debris.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Perseid Meteor Shower radiant after midnight

The radiant is actually circumpolar for northern Michigan.  At 10:30 p.m. it’s just east or the north compass point and very low on the horizon.