Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2020 August 10

                            Perseids from Perseus
                    Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek

   Explanation: Where are all these meteors coming from? In terms of
   direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of
   Perseus. That is why the meteor shower that peaks tomorrow night is
   known as the Perseids -- the meteors all appear to came from a radiant
   toward Perseus. In terms of parent body, though, the sand-sized debris
   that makes up the Perseids meteors come from Comet Swift-Tuttle. The
   comet follows a well-defined orbit around our Sun, and the part of the
   orbit that approaches Earth is superposed in front of the Perseus.
   Therefore, when Earth crosses this orbit, the radiant point of falling
   debris appears in Perseus. Featured here, a composite image taken over
   eight nights and containing over 400 meteors from last August's
   Perseids meteor shower shows many bright meteors that streaked over
   Kolonica Observatory in Slovakia. This year's Perseids holds promise to
   be one of the best meteor showers of the year.

                     Tomorrow's picture: high on jupiter
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