Spark and Perl go looking
Something just scratched the sky.
A grain of dust. Smaller than the grit in your eye.
That cannot be right. It lit up half the sky.
It arrived about sixty times faster than a rifle bullet.
It never came near the ground. It burned away a hundred kilometres above your head.
There is another. And another, and another.
We are flying through a trail of them. A comet came this way long ago and left crumbs all along its path.
The Earth crosses that path on the same nights every year.
They are all coming out of that one spot up there.
They are falling side by side, like rain.
It really does look like a spot.
Railway lines look as though they meet in one spot too.
Ah — they only LOOK as though they come from one spot, because they are coming straight at us.
The shower is named after the stars that spot sits in. This one sits in Perseus, so these are the Perseids.
That is all the name means. The dust never came from there.
The Perseids every August, and the Geminids every December — and it costs nothing at all.
Lie on your back where no lamp can reach you, give your eyes twenty minutes to get used to the dark, and watch the widest piece of sky you can find.
Back to Spark and Perl on Earth
About
Space