Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Tuesday, August 7th.  The sun rises at 6:36.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 22 minutes, setting at 8:59.   The moon, 2 days before last quarter, will rise at 11:20 this evening.

The Perseid meteor shower is so named because the meteors seem to come from the direction of the constellation of Perseus which starts in the evening low in the northeast and rotates up throughout the night higher and higher.  The comet responsible is Comet Swift-Tuttle, discovered in 1862 by Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle.  The comet has a 130 year orbit and returned in 1992.  It’s orbit intersects ours at a 113 degree angle, which is why the radiant point is so far north.  The Perseids have been recorded for 2,000 years so the comet has been around much longer than that.  It’s nucleus is 17 miles in diameter, about twice that of Halley’s Comet.  While Comet Swift-Tuttle won’t be back this century, we can see bits of it tonight.

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