RIYADH, 12 August 2005 — An amazing celestial firework display caused by meteor showers will be clearly visible in the Kingdom tonight. The showers will last for about two weeks with good numbers from Aug. 17 through Aug. 24.
The best display will be on Aug. 12, said Dr. Zaki Abdulrahman Al-Mostafa, head of the Astronomy Department at the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), here yesterday. “If conditions are good, we can expect to see about 80 meteors an hour, perhaps more,” said Dr. Al-Mostafa, adding that the shower, visible with the naked eye, will start at 8 p.m. and continue until midnight.
The KACST scientist said that the meteor showers would be best seen from the rural areas where city lights would not interfere with observation.
Dr. Al-Mostafa, who is also the assistant director of the KACST’s Institute of Astronomical and Geophysical Research, said that the meteor showers would be visible, falling from north to east, all over Saudi Arabia.
Meteor showers can be seen whenever the Earth moves through a meteor stream. The stream in this case is called the Perseid cloud and it stretches along the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud is made of particles ejected by the comet as it passes by the sun. Most of the dust in the cloud today is about a thousand years old. In most years, the Perseids feature about 50 to 100 shooting stars per hour.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Commission for Tourism has called on the tourists to observe the meteor showers from tourist sites.
