This Saturday night is the maximum activity of the Perseids, the most famous rain of stars of the summer also known as Tears of San Lorenzo. For a good observation, it is necessary to find a place without light pollution, with few obstacles to the view, such as trees or buildings, not using optical instruments and having some patience.
Unlike last year's August, this is excellent for chasing shooting stars, since the peak of activity this morning will occur three days before the new moon: "Fortunately, the thin waning moon will offer excellent conditions for observation throughout the entire night," says the National Geographic Institute (IGN) on its website.
The observation place can be any as long as it provides a dark sky, without clouds. The use of the mobile phone to adapt the eyes to the dark should also be avoided.
The Perseids (which are actually meteors) are visible throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and the speeds of these meteors can exceed 50 kilometers per second, according to IGN data.
Although their moment of maximum activity takes place this morning, they began around July 17 and will end around August 24.
The standard models say that its activity in perfect conditions is between 100 and 150 meteors every hour, but then the reality is somewhat different, since the rain is not regular -you don't have to wait for a meteor shower-, and the amount varies depending on the time, the place chosen or the visual acuity of the observer. "Perhaps in an instant, practically in an hour, we will be able to see about 30 or 40 shooting stars", has indicated the astronomy monitor of the Royal Observatory of Madrid, Emilio Gálvez.
Meteor showers occur when the trail of dust and rock particles left behind by comets in their orbit around the Sun enters the Earth's atmosphere and volatilizes, producing a luminous effect: meteors. These phenomena can be predicted in advance, since every year the Earth on its way around the Sun crosses the trajectory of several comets, in this case the Swift-Tuttle comet.
The orbit of this comet is filled with thousands of small particles like grains of sand that, when they cross the Earth, impact against its atmosphere. This shock produces, in these tiny fragments, a temperature increase of up to five thousand degrees in a fraction of a second, which causes them to disintegrate and emit a flash of light, a meteor or a shooting star.
The Perseids are also popularly known as the Tears of San Lorenzo because this astronomical phenomenon happens every year on dates very close to the festivities of this saint who was burned at the stake: "The only gesture of pain he made was to drop a tear while being burned alive", hence his nickname.
