Perseid meteor shower lights up night sky around Britain

Shooting stars lit up the sky as the Perseid meteor shower put on a celestial display on Monday night as the Earth passes through a cloud of cometary dust.
Greg Wright
By Greg Wright

Deputy Business Editor

Published 13th Aug 2024, 08:13 BST
Updated 13th Aug 2024, 08:16 BST

The event is associated with the dusty debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years.

The meteoroids from the comet, mostly no bigger than a grain of sand, burned up as they hit the Earth’s atmosphere at 36 miles per second, to produce a shooting stream of light in the sky.

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Speaking on Monday, Jess Lee, astronomy education officer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: “This shower is known for a particularly high rate of meteors and particularly bright meteors.”

Handout photo issued by X (formerly Twitter) user Andrew Hawkes/@namboozle of a sighting of the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, on How Hill Road in Harrogate, North Yorkshire on Sunday, as part of the Perseid meteor shower. ( Photo by Andrew Hawkes/@namboozle/PA Wire)Handout photo issued by X (formerly Twitter) user Andrew Hawkes/@namboozle of a sighting of the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, on How Hill Road in Harrogate, North Yorkshire on Sunday, as part of the Perseid meteor shower. ( Photo by Andrew Hawkes/@namboozle/PA Wire)
Handout photo issued by X (formerly Twitter) user Andrew Hawkes/@namboozle of a sighting of the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, on How Hill Road in Harrogate, North Yorkshire on Sunday, as part of the Perseid meteor shower. ( Photo by Andrew Hawkes/@namboozle/PA Wire)

The Perseids are named after the constellation of Perseus, because if you trace the meteors back across the sky they appear to have come from that area. The meteors were spotted as far south as Devon.

The meteor shower is active between July 17 and August 24.

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