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The Perseids Fail to ShowSun, 12 August 2001 03:57 Around midnight to 2:00am was supposedly the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. When I stepped outside at 11:40pm I saw one in the first 30 seconds - bright and with a long tail, it streaked overhead as clear as anything. Cool, I thought, tracing it's trajectory back and observed that it intersected a point in the sky mid-way between the constellations of Perseus and Cassiopeia, indicating that yes, this was most probably a piece of the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet - which is what the Perseid meteor shower actually is, as the Earth passes through the debris field left by the comet. Unfortunately, that was the only meteor I saw that evening. |