Note to Editors: Doug Duncan is available for interviews. For visuals, Fiske Planetarium has a large meteorite on display and Duncan has a portable, baseball-sized meteorite. Call Duncan at (303) 492-5003 or Greg Swenson at (303) 492-3113 to arrange an interview.
The Perseid meteor shower, an annual celestial event, will be visible in the night sky throughout Colorado in early August, according to experts at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Fiske Planetarium.
The natural nighttime light show will be most visible in dark areas away from city lights and will peak during the early morning hours of Aug. 12, according to Doug Duncan, director of CU-Boulder's Fiske Planetarium and Sommers-Bausch Observatory.
"The Perseids are among the most dependable of meteor showers," Duncan said. "They never fail to produce dozens of meteors per hour if you see them under dark skies. They also produce some meteors several days before and after the peak night, so keep your eyes open," he said.
How dark the sky is is very important when it comes to viewing meteors, according to Duncan.
"A person up in the Rockies might see 50 meteors in an hour," Duncan said. "During that same hour, someone in Boulder might see 10 and someone in downtown Denver only one or two, or even none," he said. He added that this year the first quarter moon happens on Aug. 13, so it won't significantly interfere with meteor viewing.
The best time to view the meteors is after midnight, because before midnight Colorado is on the side of the Earth that faces directly away from the sun, according to Duncan.
"But after midnight the Earth turns us to be facing forward in our orbit around the sun," Duncan said. "Just like a car hits more bugs on the front windshield than on the rear, the front of the Earth hits more meteors."
Meteor showers occur when the Earth crosses the path of a comet, sweeping through debris left behind along the orbit. Millions of chunks of ice and dust make up the tail of a comet. These chunks of debris might be as small as a pea and travel through the solar system at more than 36,000 miles per hour.
The Perseid meteor shower is caused by the Earth passing through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which is in orbit around the sun. The chunks of space junk that make up the tail are only seen as meteors when they get caught in Earth's gravity and burn up in the atmosphere.
The Perseid meteor shower is named for the Perseus constellation from which the meteors, or shooting stars, appear to radiate.
For more information about Fiske Planetarium or Sommers-Bausch Observatory call (303) 492-5002 or visit the planetarium's Web site at or the observatory's Web site at: .