The 2011 Perseid meteor show will be largely masked tonight - the peak night of the year - thanks to a gorgeous full moon. But if you're into meteors and spacial things that go "glow" in the night - take heart. While you may not be able to see but only the brightest of meteorites falling through our atmosphere this year, you can still hear them What?! Yes - hear them. Distant FM radio signals tend bounce off the streaks of hot, ionized gas the meteors leave in their wakes as speed through our atmosphere, meaning if you take a small FM radio with you when you head outdoors to catch a glimpse of the showers, you may not see some of them, but when a snippet of a distant song comes across your radio speaker or a "ping" can be heard where you normally wouldn't be hearing a FM station, then you will know a meteorite just streaked across the moon-filled sky even though you didn't see it. I would recommend tuning to a station a couple of hundred miles or more away from you - one you don't normally get, and make certain it is the only station on that frequency in your area. You might hear a ping instead of the actual station - and that makes it all the cooler because it sounds like -- well, like spacey stuff out of a science-fiction movie. It sounds like this. In fact, that is it! It is better if you listen with headphones. See what you can learn from a radio guy? A FEW FACTS
The meteors are bits of debris that comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle casts off when it approaches the sun, warms, and begins shedding its dust and gas. The shower gets its name from the constellation Perseus, which appears to be the point in the sky from which the shower originates. Swift-Tuttle returns once every 130 years. But each August, Earth's orbit takes it through the debris cloud Swift-Tuttle leaves behind. Over the last five years, the number of meteors one could expect to see in an hour under dark skies has ranged from 93 in 2007 to 173 in 2009. But, like this year, 2009's display was tempered by a nearly full moon.
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