BUCKHANNON — Turn your eyes to the sky, Upshur County, as two meteor showers skirt through the atmosphere through mid-August.
The Southern Delta Aquariid and Alpha Capricornid meteor showers will overlap for the next several weeks, offering stargazers a cosmic double feature.
You could catch quite a show. The Delta Aquariids are expected to produce 15 to 20 visible meteors per hour under dark skies, while the Alpha Capricornids, though less numerous, often create very bright fireballs.
The Delta Aquariids are forecast to skim the skies through August 21 and will peak Tuesday, while the Alpha Capricornids last through August 15 and will also peak this week. Meteor showers are best viewed between midnight and the predawn hours, away from city lights.
Leave the phone at home: avoid screen time while watching the celestial show to preserve your night vision.
Like most meteor showers, the Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids both originate from comets and can be seen with the naked eye. These ‘shooting stars’ are formed when debris from the comets — sometimes as small as a few grains of sand — burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Because of the Earth’s orientation, the showers are best viewed well after midnight, when their point of origin is higher in the night sky. They can appear across wide swaths of the sky. For an extra bonus, look to the north and you might spot the onset of the Perseids, one of the best meteor showers of the year, which will peak on August 11-12.
Enjoy the show!
