Updated for viewing the Perseid meteor shower streaming live tonight (August 13 to the morning of August 14, 2011).
The annual Perseid meteor shower will be available in a live streaming feed tonight. The feed is already live and rolling.
The peak of the shower was last night, however, tonight there should still be a good show. Like last night, the peak is expected to be about 2am to 3am in the morning. According to NASA, those in the Southern Hemisphere may have trouble viewing the meteor shower as the show will be low on the horizon. They say that it will be best viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. On NASA’s chat session last night (done only last night, no chat tonight), the experts made clear that the peak time to watch the Perseid meteor shower locally in any time zone would be between 2am to 3am local time.
The Perseid meteor shower is caused by the earth’s passage through the dust and ice field left behind by the Comet Swift-Tuttle. The meteor shower re-occurs each August and has been watched by humans for thousands of years. Comet Swift-Tuttle orbits the sun once every 133 years, and most of the dust and ice that burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere as shooting stars has been floating in space for over a thousand years.
UStream is streaming the Perseid meteor shower live tonight, and we’ve got it here!
The live stream has already begun and will continue to run until dawn Sunday morning. It’s below. According to NASA, approximately 20 to 30 (at most) shooting stars are expected during peak times. They go by quick on the video. As meteors pass by, there will be blips, pings and whistle sounds. That’s the sound of the meteor ionizing the air around it as it burns up high in the atmosphere, according to NASA. The ionized air molecules reflect radio waves back to a radio antenna. Some of the meteors that are ‘heard’ on the video may not be seen because they are outside the viewing area of the video.
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