Adri­an Boodan

A me­te­or show­er will be vis­i­ble to­day and to­mor­row, says head of UWI's Physics de­part­ment at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus Dr Shirin Haque. Haque said earth was en­ter­ing a stream of dusty de­bris from Comet Swift-Tut­tle which was the source of the an­nu­al Per­seid me­te­or show­er. The show­er will peak to­day and to­mor­row mak­ing it pos­si­ble to see dozens of me­te­ors per hour af­ter night­fall to­day and this will con­tin­ue in­to sun­rise Wednes­day.

To see the me­te­ors, Haque sug­gest­ed, "Un­fold a blan­ket on a flat patch of ground in a dark site. Lie down and look up. Per­sei­ds can ap­pear in any part of the sky, their tails all point­ing back to the show­er's ra­di­ance in the con­stel­la­tion Perseus. "For Trinida­di­an ob­servers, that would be in the north­ern part of the sky, not far from the Cas­siopeia con­stel­la­tion (the 'W'con­stel­la­tion). This is best en­joyed by naked eye." Haque said to­mor­row the moon would shed an un­want­ed light on the me­te­or show­er.

"The moon is beau­ti­ful, but don't stare at it, bright moon­light ru­ins night vi­sion and it will wipe out any faint Per­sei­ds in that part of the sky." This is al­so the month of the Mars Hoax said Haque. "Mars will not be at its clos­est in 60,000 years this month, it will not look as big as the full moon. Please help to dis­pel this myth which makes an an­noy­ing ap­pear­ance by e-mail every year since it oc­curred in 2003. "Mars was at its clos­est then... but even then it did not and can nev­er look as big as the moon in the sky," she added.