Perseid Fireballs

Perseid Fireballs

The full Moon of August 10th is no ordinary full Moon--it's a supermoon, the biggest and brightest of 2014. This has raised concerns that bright moonlight will outshine the Perseid meteor shower, underway now as Earth moves into the debris stream of parent Comet Swift-Tuttle. So far the Perseids are holding their own. In recent nights, observers have reported dozens of Perseid fireballs cutting through the glare. One, photographed by Thomas Ashcraft in New Mexico, came with sound effects:

Play it again. The ghostly warbling sound you just heard was a terrestrial radio signal bouncing off the ionized trail of the fireball. This method of detecting meteors is called "forward scatter radar." Ashcraft, who is an amateur radio astronomer, routinely uses this method to monitor meteor activity over his observatory not far from Santa Fe. Lately, he has been recording lots of echoes.

"My radio fireball array and all-sky camera caught this Perseid earthgrazer at 11:30 pm here in New Mexico as the constellation Perseus was coming up over the northern horizon," says Ashcraft. "It caused a dynamic dopplering forward scatter reflection in stereo on two of my radios."

"Even though there is a bright moon at the moment, there will still be some beautiful Perseids over the next few nights," he predicts.

Got clouds? You can listen to more meteor echoes, live, on Space Weather Radio.

From Space Weather.com