The Perseids are a prolific

meteor shower A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at ext ...

associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle that are usually visible from mid-

July July is the seventh month of the year in the Julian calendar, Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days. It was named by the Roman Senate in honour of Roman general Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., being the month of his birth. Before the ...

to late-

August August is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days. In the Southern Hemisphere, August is the seasonal equivalent of February in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, August ...

. The

meteors A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...

are called the Perseids because they appear from the general direction of the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

Perseus In Greek mythology, Perseus (, ; Greek language, Greek: Περσεύς, Romanization of Greek, translit. Perseús) is the legendary founder of the Perseid dynasty. He was, alongside Cadmus and Bellerophon, the greatest Greek hero and slayer of ...

and in more modern times have a radiant bordering on

Cassiopeia Cassiopeia or Cassiopea may refer to: Greek mythology * Cassiopeia (mother of Andromeda), queen of Aethiopia and mother of Andromeda * Cassiopeia (wife of Phoenix), wife of Phoenix, king of Phoenicia * Cassiopeia, wife of Epaphus, king of Egy ...

and

Camelopardalis Camelopardalis is a large but faint constellation of the northern sky representing a giraffe. The constellation was introduced in 1612 or 1613 by Petrus Plancius. Some older astronomy books give Camelopardalus or Camelopardus as alternative form ...

Etymology

The name is derived from the word

Perseids The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle that are usually visible from mid-July to late-August. The meteoroid, meteors are called the Perseids because they appear from the general direction of the const ...

(), the sons of

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

Characteristics

The radiant point for the Perseid meteor shower

The stream of debris is called the Perseid cloud and stretches along the

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit (also known as orbital revolution) is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an ...

of the comet Swift–Tuttle. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it travels on its 133-year orbit. Most of the particles have been part of the cloud for around a thousand years. However, there is also a relatively young filament of dust in the stream that was pulled off the comet in 1865, which can give an early mini-peak the day before the maximum shower. The dimensions of the cloud in the vicinity of the Earth are estimated to be approximately 0.1

astronomical units The astronomical unit (symbol: au or AU) is a unit of length defined to be exactly equal to . Historically, the astronomical unit was conceived as the average Earth-Sun distance (the average of Earth's aphelion and perihelion), before its mode ...

(AU) across and 0.8 AU along the Earth's orbit, spread out by annual interactions with the Earth's gravity. The shower is visible from mid-July each year, with the peak in activity between 9 and 14 August, depending on the particular location of the stream. During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. They can be seen all across the sky; however, because of the shower's radiant in the constellation of Perseus, the Perseids are primarily visible in the

Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined by humans as being in the same celestial sphere, celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the Solar ...

. As with many meteor showers the visible rate is greatest in the pre-dawn hours, since more meteoroids are scooped up by the side of the Earth moving forward into the stream, corresponding to local times between midnight and noon, as can be seen in the accompanying diagram. While many meteors arrive between dawn and noon, they are usually not visible due to daylight. Some can also be seen before midnight, often grazing the Earth's atmosphere to produce long bright trails and sometimes fireballs. Most Perseids burn up in the atmosphere while at heights above .

Peak times

Historical observations and associations

Some

Catholics The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

refer to the Perseids as the "tears of

Saint Lawrence Saint Lawrence or Laurence (; 31 December 225 – 10 August 258) was one of the seven deacons of the city of Rome under Pope Sixtus II who were martyred in the Persecution of Christians, persecution of the Christians that the Roman Empire, Rom ...

", suspended in the sky but returning to Earth once a year on August 10, the canonical date of that saint's martyrdom in 258 AD. The

saint In Christianity, Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of sanctification in Christianity, holiness, imitation of God, likeness, or closeness to God in Christianity, God. However, the use of the ...

is said to have been burned alive on a gridiron. His manner of death is almost certainly the origin of the Mediterranean folk legend claiming that the shooting stars are the sparks of Saint Lawrence's

martyrdom A martyr (, ''mártys'', 'witness' stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In colloqui ...

. The legend holds that during the night of August 9 to 10, cooled embers appear in the ground under plants; these embers are known as the "coal of Saint Lawrence." The transition in favor of the Catholic saint and his feast day on August 10, moving away from pagan gods and their festivals — a process known as

Christianization Christianization (or Christianisation) is a term for the specific type of change that occurs when someone or something has been or is being converted to Christianity. Christianization has, for the most part, spread through missions by individu ...

— was facilitated by the phonetic assonance of the Latin name Laurentius with Acca Larentia, a goddess previously celebrated during the summer period alongside

Priapus In Greek mythology, Priapus (; ) is a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens, and male genitalia. Priapus is marked by his oversized, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical term priapism. He becam ...

, as a fertility deity. Among the Romans, it was believed that the trails of the Perseids represented the benevolent rain of Priapus' seed. In this context, the god's cosmogonic phallus acted as a life-giver, blessing the fields and promoting fertility. During the same period, phallic processions and other sexual rites were common. Christianity, which had a different relationship with sexuality and generativity compared to

Greco-Roman culture The Greco-Roman world , also Greco-Roman civilization, Greco-Roman culture or Greco-Latin culture (spelled Græco-Roman or Graeco-Roman in British English), as understood by modern scholars and writers, includes the geographical regions and co ...

, replaced this sexual connotation with a reference to martyrdom. In 1836

Adolphe Quetelet Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet FRSF or FRSE (; 22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a Belgian- French astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist who founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential ...

wrote: ''J'ai cru remarquer aussi une fréquence plus grande de ces météores au mois d'août (du 8 au 15)'' "I think I noticed also a greater frequency of these meteors in the month of August (from 8 to 15)."''Annuaire de l'Observatoire Royal de Bruxelles'', Volume 4, 1836
p272
(In French) After studying historical records, he predicted a peak on 10 August. He then wrote to other astronomers, who confirmed this prediction on the night of 10 August 1837. Quetelet missed the shower due to bad weather.Sauval, J., "Quetelet and the Discovery of the First Meteor Showers", ''WGN, Journal of the International Meteor Organization'', February 1997, p
21-33
In 1866, after the

perihelion An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. The line of apsides (also called apse line, or major axis of the orbit) is the line connecting the two extreme values. Apsides perta ...

passage of Swift-Tuttle in 1862, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli discovered the link between meteor showers and comets. The finding is contained in an exchange of letters with

Angelo Secchi Angelo Secchi (; 28 June 1818 – 26 February 1878) was an Italians, Italian Priesthood in the Catholic Church, Catholic priest and astronomer from the Regions of Italy, Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, Emilia. He was director of the observato ...

In popular culture

In his 2006 novel '' Against the Day'', American novelist

Thomas Pynchon Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, Literary genre, genres and Theme (narrative), th ...

refers to the Perseid meteor shower being watched by three characters west of the Dolores Valley after playing a game of

tarot Tarot (, first known as ''trionfi (cards), trionfi'' and later as ''tarocchi'' or ''tarocks'') is a set of playing cards used in tarot games and in fortune-telling or divination. From at least the mid-15th century, the tarot was used to play t ...

. In the TV series ''

Curious George Curious George is a fictional monkey who is the title character of a series of popular children's picture books written and illustrated by Margret and H. A. Rey. Various media, including films and TV shows, have been based upon the original ...

'', season 7 episode 1b, George and his friends Allie and Bill hunt for the Perseids, which they believe are creatures that look like purses. At the end of the episode, Allie's grandfather Mr. Renkins says that the Perseids is a meteor shower happening in early August.

John Denver Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. (December 31, 1943 – October 12, 1997), known professionally as John Denver, was an American Country music, country and Folk music, folk singer, songwriter, and actor. He was one of the most popular acoustic m ...

's song " Rocky Mountain High" references the showers with the lyric, "I've seen it raining fire in the sky."

References

General and cited references

* Littman, Mark, ''The Heavens on Fire: The Great Leonid Meteor Storms'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. . Chapter 6, "The Discovery of the August Meteors", pp. 83–100.

External links

Where to see the Perseids and public stargazing events in the UK (Go Stargazing)

Worldwide viewing times for the 2016 Perseids meteor shower

How to see the Perseid meteor shower in 2024
(Paul Sutherland)
How to photograph a meteor shower
(Skymania)

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20160305071426/http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~hro/Flash/2014/PER/ 2014 Perseids Radio results(RMOB)
Perseid Visibility Map
(2014 NASA Meteoroid Environment Office)

NASA website on the Perseid shower of 2009

2012 Image of Perseids emanating from the radiant

What are the perseids?
{{Portal bar, Astronomy, Stars, Outer space, Solar System July August Meteor showers Perseus (constellation)