Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Aug 6.  This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Monday, August 6th.  The sun rises at 6:35.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 25 minutes, setting at 9:00.   The moon, 3 days before last quarter, will rise at 10:52 this evening.

Saturday night through Sunday morning will be the period of the maximum number of meteors in the Perseid meteor shower.  There are many meteor showers but a few very active ones.  Of these the Perseids are the most famous.  Meteor showers occur the same dates during the year because      meteoroid streams are debris left near the orbits of comets.  If a comet passes near the earth’s orbit  the debris it sheds when close to the sun will end up in orbits similar to the comet and when the earth passes the spot we experience a meteor shower.  Thus in late July through mid August we pass through the meteoroid stream of debris of Comet Swift-Tuttle, whose sand to pea sized particles hit the atmosphere at 40 miles per second providing us a celestial show.

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