The Kanabec County Times

SHOOTING STARS ARE SLATED FOR SATURDAY NIGHT

Famous Perseid Shower to Be Evident in Northeastern Sky.

(Minneapolis Journal)

Washington, Aug. 6. (By Science Service)—Watch the northeastern sky next Saturday night and even into early Sunday. Then you will be rewarded by a sight of some of the meteors or "shooting stars," of the famous Perseid shower.

But though it is called a "shower" one should not expect anything approaching a shower of rain. True, there have been showers of meteors in the past, when the entire sky has been covered with thousands of them like the ribs of a gigantic umbrella. Such a shower is very rare, and no one can tell when one will again occur.

On almost any clear night a careful watcher probably can see half a dozen meteors flash across the sky in the course of an hour. At the time of the Perseids however, this number may greatly increase so that one can easily see an average of one a minute or even more.

This month they will be easily visible because the moon will be out of the way, and Saturday night will be dark. When there is a full moon in the sky at the time of the shower, its brilliance, while not making the meteors completely invisible, at least makes them less conspicuous.

The name of the Perseid shower comes from the location of what astronomers call the radiant. That is, the ordinary casual meteors that one sees on any night may float across the sky in any direction. The meteors of a shower, however, all seem to radiate from a particular part of the sky. In the case of the August shower, the radiant, or point from which they seem to come, is in the constellation of Perseus, which can be seen high in the northeastern sky after midnight.