The night, or early morning, skies should be pretty spectacular in the next few days, particularly between the 12th and 14th as the Perseids meteor shower becomes visible.
Also known as the ‘Tears of St Lawrence’, the meteor shower will peak at the rate of about 60 per hour, a bit like a sky full of shooting stars.
The Perseids, so named because they appear to come from a point known as the radiant in the constellation Perseus, are associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle and have been observed for about 2000 years.
Meteor showers occur when the Earth moves through a meteor stream, in this case the Perseid cloud which stretches along the orbit of the Comet The cloud is made up of particles ejected by the comet as it passed by the Sun.
The Perseids got its second name, the Tears of St. Lawrence, in medieval times. St Lawrence, born in what is now Spain, was one of the seven deacons of ancient Rome who were martyred in AD 258 by Emperor Valerian.
Representations of St Lawrence generally show him holding a gridiron, symbolic of the way he met his death. Whilst being tortured on the gridiron, he is said to have cried out, “I am already roasted on one side and, if thou wouldst have me well cooked, it is time to turn me on the other.”
The peak of the shower is predicted to be around 05:00 tomorrow morning but it will continue to be visible for a few more days after that.