A “HUGE” meteor shower is set to light up Irish skies next week – with an astronomy expert saying “no one should sleep that night”.
The best night of the year for shooting stars is expected to be Monday, August 12.
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The Perseid shower will reach its peak activity with 20 times more shooting stars than a normal night.
And people living in dark rural areas may see one or more per minute instead of one every 10 minutes.
Editor of Astronomy Ireland magazine, David Moore is asking the public to count how many they see every 15 minutes and record them at astronomy.ie.
He said: “These simple counts have real scientific value as we only know how these meteor showers develop by members of the public counting them while they view the beautiful spectacle of nature that is a meteor shower.
“You do not need any telescopes or binoculars, just normal human eyesight, oh, and a clear sky, but a few clouds won’t spoil the view especially as you have all the hours of darkness to see them and this shower is known for producing some brilliant fireballs.
“I remember seeing one that light up the whole countryside like daylight for a few seconds!
“The best time to view is from about 10pm when the sky gets dark and you can watch as long as you like, until dawn the next morning if you want to make a night of it.”
He added: “This a a FREE ‘Celestial Fireworks’ display courtesy of Mother Nature, that is visible over nearly the entire planet!”
A typical Perseid meteor is said to travel at 133,200 mph.
They burn up in our atmosphere and almost none of them hit the ground.
If they do they will then be called a meteorite.
According to Astronomy Ireland, Perseid meteors are caused by a swarm of tiny dust particles “about the size of grains of sand”.
They added: “The comet has been around the Sun hundreds or thousands of times and left debris all around its orbit.
“Even though the comet takes 130 years to go around the Sun, and was last seen in Irish skies in 1992, we plough through this field of debris every August and get this strong meteor shower.
“We collide with the tiny particles at 130,000 mph (36 miles per second) and they burn up, harmlessly, high in the atmosphere many times higher than even jet aircraft fly and so they are no danger to those watching on the ground, but they do make an awesome sight to the naked eye that everyone can enjoy.”
Meanwhile, a giant chunk of a long-lost “microcontinent” that never fully formed has been found.
The failed land mass between North America and Europe was born around 58 million years ago – but was ultimately doomed.
Evidence of the continental mishap was found beneath the Davis Strait.
This is an arm of the Arctic Ocean north of the Labrador Sea between Canada and Greenland.
Scientists say the seafloor beneath the waterway is “anomalously thick” – and now they know why.