MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Tariq Malik, Space.com via NBC News – “The Perseid meteor shower is still days away from hitting its peak, but a NASA camera network has already captured video of fireballs from the annual night sky light show.

NASA’s network of meteor-tracking cameras spotted the early meteor last week in a preview of what may come when the Perseid meteor shower peaks over the upcoming weekend.

‘Here is a video of a bright Perseid seen by our all-sky camera located at PARI (NC) in the early morning hours of July 30,’ meteor expert William Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., wrote in a video description on Aug. 1. ‘Several Perseids have already been detected and they are not set to peak for over a week!’ [See more early photos of the 2013 Perseid Meteor Shower by stargazers]

The 2013 Perseid meteor shower will peak overnight between Aug. 11 and 12, and Aug. 12 and 13, Cooke wrote, adding that NASA’s fireball network is already catching more Perseids as the time of peak activity nears.

The Perseid meteor shower occurs each year in mid-August when the Earth passes through a stream of dusty debris from the Comet Swift-Tuttle, which takes about 130 years to orbit the sun. The comet last passed through the inner solar system in December 1992.

Cooke has said that the Perseids may be such a dependable and prolific meteor shower because of the size of their source. Comet Swift-Tuttle has a huge nucleus just over 16 miles (26 kilometers) across, whereas the cores of most comets are only a few miles wide, he said.

The meteor shower is also known for spawning fireballs — which are extremely bright meteors — every few hours or so when observed under dark conditions.” Read more.