The Perseid meteor shower is due to put on a great show in this week’s stargazing guide.
What’s in the night sky in the week of 7 to 13 August, 2023 in our weekly stargazing guide. This Perseid meteor shower peaks this week, and this year’s shower promises to put on quite a show.
Chris Bramley Hello and welcome to Star Diary, the podcast from the makers of BBC Sky at Night Magazine. You can subscribe to the print edition of the magazine by visiting www.skyatnightmagazine.com or digital edition by visiting on iTunes or Google Play.
Ezzy Pearson: Greetings listeners and welcome to Star Diary, a weekly guide to the best things to see in the northern hemisphere’s night sky. As we are based here in the UK, all times are in BST. In this episode, we’ll be covering the coming week from 7 to 13 August. I’m Features Editor Ezzy Pearson and I’m joined this week by Reviews Editor Paul Money. Hello Paul. So what have we got coming up for us this week? We did tease last week that there might be some cool things coming up, so please do tell us.
Paul Money: Oh yes, oh yes indeed. Well, we stick with the morning sky because at the moment a lot of the activity is in the morning sky, I have to say. And that’s because we follow the Moon, and the Moon passes so many objects. This is the beauty about the Moon, this sort of thing, it does give us a guide to quite a lot of objects in the night sky, whether it’s the evening or the morning sky. So at the moment it’s in the morning sky. And on 8 August, roughly about 2 o’clock, looking at 2 o’clock, I mean obviously this is to allow you so that it’s well above the horizon, and we have the Moon to the upper right of Jupiter. So we always get comments sort of thing, don’t we, of sort of like, what’s that star that was to the lower left of the Moon or next to the Moon and whatnot. And we always said, “that was no star, that was a planet.” You know, and, you know, and it’s usually Jupiter or Venus, it’s usually one of the bright ones, because obviously the fainter ones are a lot harder, but the moon uses, we can use the moon as a guide to the faint ones. So on 8th then, 2am, look for the moon to the upper right of Jupiter. It’s actually above the head of Cetus, the Whale as well. And the moon Jupiter forms a triangle with Mu Ceti. So well worth having a look at if you’ve never seen Mu Ceti itself. So the next morning, the Moon acts as a guide to Uranus. It’s to the upper left of Uranus. And the Moon is passing these two planets and the Pleiades as well. So when it’s above left of Uranus, it’s actually almost level and to the right of the Pleiades star cluster. And on the next morning on 10th, then it’s actually to the lower left of the Pleiades star cluster itself. Now the Moon is actually at last quarter on 8th, so up to the upper right of Jupiter. So you know, it’s one of those things that is well worth having a look at. And by the time it gets to the left-hand side of the Pleiades, it’s also directly above the Hyades and Aldebaran as a bonus. And again, that tells us that the whole constellation of Taurus now is above the horizon. And yes, winter is on the way.
Ezzy: It does certainly sound like there’s a lot going on in that corner of the sky.
Paul: At the moment because of these two planets and whatnot as well, some nice real deep sky objects, you know, it’s a gem of an area to explore anyway even without the planets. Now moving on, we get to August 12. I say sometimes these things, there’s not a lot happening, but I thought this is an interesting one. August 12, this is the morning sky, 3am now. By 3am, most of Gemini has risen, and the upper half of Orion has risen as well. So Betelgeuse will be above the horizon, Bellatrix, and of course, Castor and Pollux as well. So you’re getting these back in the sky, and you’ve got a crescent moon. So as it happens, there should be some Earth shine with that crescent moon. But it also lies to the upper left of the star cluster Messier 35. So it’s one of these things whereby it could be a bit of a challenge, but you could try taking two photographs. One to pick up the cluster and bring out the Earthshine, the other to just capture the crescent of the moon, and then see if you can merge the two to get a nice composite picture of the cluster and the crescent moon with Earthshine as well. It is a tricky business trying to capture the bright side of the Moon with the detail as well as the Earthshine, so it is a bit of a challenge there. But interestingly enough, as the skies are getting darker, we can now start picking up on some of the minor worlds. And in this particular region, we’ve also got the minor planet 4 Vesta. It’s around about +8.0 magnitude, and it’s to the upper right of Zeta Tauri. Now, Zeta Tauri has got the Crab Nebula nearby, so again if you want an extra thing, with the Crescent Moon being such a slim crescent, it won’t put out too much light, so you should be able to pick out the Crab Nebula, Messier 1. So you’ve got a minor planet, you’ve got a supernova remnant, you’ve got the crescent Moon, you’ve got a star cluster, I mean what more could you ask for?
Ezzy: It seems pretty much whatever kind of astronomer you are, there’s going to be something in that lot for you. Except maybe if you’re a solar astronomer, you might have to wait a bit for that one.
Paul: Yes, yes, it’s a bit hard to see. It’s a bit like the sort of thing when you sometimes see the weather forecast and they’ve accidentally said, sort of thing, and the Sun will be up and they’re showing a time for late night and you think, no, not quite. Now, we’ve been waiting for this and as you’ve alluded to in the past. We’ve got a good year for meteor showers, and the thing about meteor showers is one of the best ones is the Perseid meteor shower. As we mentioned last week, the radiant technically is just in Cassiopeia, but it’s one of those things…it’s also not far from Camelopardalis, so yes, definitely should be a Perseid. The actual peak is in the early hours of 13th, so you really want to be starting to watch from the night of 12th through into 13th to actually observe. Now we’ve mentioned the Moon, yes, by the time 13th, the moon will actually be really low down. At 2am it’ll only just be rising. So from midnight onwards you’ve got a couple of hours with no Moon and relatively dark skies. So this is one of the, not quite the best, it has to be new moon, but we’re not far off, we’re only a few days it’s next week new moon. So this is an ideal time to capture the Per… have a summer barbecue. Invite your friends round and then say look if you bring in some loungers, which you can rename meteor loungers, lay them out and say, if you want to stay on, if it’s a clear sky, let’s watch for meteors. And they have a good rate, anywhere between 80 to 100 plus. But of course, you know what we always say, we always qualify this in the fact that that’s under absolutely perfect conditions. You know, pitch black skies looking directly at the zenith as if the radiance there, you know, and no haze or anything like that to spoil the view. But of course, reality is different. So I would say divide that by at least four. Now, that sounds miserable, but I have actually had sessions whereby I’ve had something like nearly 200 in about four hours. So that comes out at a good rate, don’t it, sort of thing, 50 an hour. So it depends on the sky conditions, I think.
Ezzy: I think with these things, it’s also… set yourself sort of more modest expectations, and then if you have a really good year, that’s even more of a boost to you. Yes, that is always important to remember. The ZHR is a perfect conditions under a perfect sky that doesn’t actually exist. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the meteor shower. And there’s a lot of time to enjoy this one, because in our neck of the woods anyway, the sun sets around about 8:40. So you’ve got… and then the moon doesn’t come up until 2am. So there is a big window there where it should be nice dark skies to be able to see these meteors. And hopefully should be slightly nicer weather than it is with the Geminids in the winter in December, which is the other big one. It tends to be a bit colder. I think in some years we’ve even had snow when they’ve been happening. So [laughs].
Paul: Yes, you don’t want to be out on your sun lounger sort of thing when you’re watching the Geminids. Well, certainly not in shorts and t-shirt or anything like that.
Ezzy: I’d much rather have a Perseids barbecue than a, I don’t know, a Geminids mince pie.
Paul: Oh I like that, I like that. I mean we’ve got to remember as well that the constellation Perseus is above the horizon once the sun sets, so the Perseid radiant is above the horizon sort of thing as soon as the sun sets, so you’ve got a chance from then on, as you say, to actually see them. Obviously, the higher in the sky, the better, but people have got work to do. I mean, this is Sunday night, so sadly, we’ve got work the next day. But it’s one of those things that even if you catch a few, I mean, they can be quite bright. And also, it’s worth trying to capture them with photographs. And wide-field shots, you’ve also got the chance of potentially capturing meteors streaking past Uranus and Jupiter and the Pleiades. So that’s an extra bonus as well. So if you do get pictures, I’m sure the magazine would love you to send them in to actually show them all. They’d be brilliant, wouldn’t they?
Ezzy: Absolutely. We always like to have your images in. You can find details of how to do that in the gallery section in the magazine, or by going to www.skyatnightmagazine.com. We also have lots of guides about how to actually see meteors over on our website and in the August issue as well. So if you want to find out how to see those better, do be sure to pick those up. The basics is basically make sure that you head out with enough time to be able to let your eyes really adjust to the dark. 20 minutes, even half an hour, the longer that you are out there, letting your eyes dark adapt, you will be able to see more of these meteors. And importantly, stay off your phone and keep away from bright lights because that will set you back to zero if you look at something bright, so be careful with those. But hopefully you should see lots of meteors. Perhaps you might even track some of them and make some notes as you go, which as we spoke about last week, there’s lots of organisations out there who do that sort of thing. There’s also quite a few people who set up monitoring stations and cameras in their back garden. We covered that quite recently as well. In fact, I think it was actually on The Sky at Night show where they looked into one of our regular writers, Mary McIntyre, and her system that she had in her garden to using a CCTV camera to record the night sky looking for meteors, not just during the meteor showers, but throughout the year. So again, if that’s something that interests you, do look at the website where we have guides on how to set that up as well. On 12 August, Orion starts to return into the morning sky and you can see the moon next to M35, which should be a really good photo opportunity if you fancy a bit of a challenge and Vesta will be appearing to the right of Zeta Tauri. And of course, very importantly, on the night of 12th going into 13th of August, we have the Perseids meteor shower. It’s going to be one of the biggest events of the year, so hopefully you should be able to get out there and catch some meteors. To find out more about what’s going to be going on throughout the rest of the year, do be sure to subscribe to the podcast and we will be back here with more stargazing tips next week. Goodbye.
If you want to find out even more spectacular sights that will be gracing the night sky this month, be sure to pick up a copy of BBC Sky at Night magazine, where we have a 16-page pull-out sky guide with a full overview of everything worth looking up for throughout the whole month. Whether you like to look at the moon, the planets or the deep sky, whether you use binoculars, telescopes or neither, our Sky Guide has got you covered, with detailed star charts to help you track your way across the night sky. From all of us here at BBC Sky Night Magazine, goodbye.
Chris: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Star Diary podcast from the makers of BBC Sky Night Magazine. For more of our podcasts, visit our website at skynightmagazine.com or head to Acast, iTunes or Spotify.