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Science and Innovations

Two Meteor Showers Will Dazzle August Sky

NASA/Bill Ingalls

August is the month of meteors. From the Arizona Science Desk, Melissa Sevigny reports on two upcoming showers of shooting stars.

Two a.m. will be the best time for Arizonans to watch the events. The Delta Aquarid meteor shower peaks tonight in the southern sky with some 20 shooting stars an hour. In weeks to come, it will blend with the much more dazzling Perseids. Astronomers expect an “outburst” of one or two hundred shooting stars an hour, double the usual number. That’s because Jupiter is lined up just right to nudge Perseid meteors toward Earth. They’ll radiate out of the northeast and peak on August 12th.

Melissa joined KNAU's team in 2015 to report on science, health, and the environment. Her work has appeared nationally on NPR and been featured on Science Friday. She grew up in Tucson, Arizona, where she fell in love with the ecology and geology of the Sonoran desert.
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