Attention stargazers Irish skies are set to illuminated later this week as a spectacular meteor shower is expected to grace the night’s sky this week.
The phenomenal annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to be the strongest of the year.
According to David Moore, the chairman of Astronomy Ireland: “This year is expected to be two to three times stronger than normal, because we’re passing through a particularly dense swarm of dust particles,” Mr Moore told RTE Radio One’s Morning Ireland.
He explained that although they look like stars shooting across a sky, they are actually debris from a comet.
“They’re just bits that have fallen off a comet goes around the sun every 120 years. It’s been around so many times that there’s now a huge swarm of particles all throughout its orbit, and we pass closest to that, a particularly dense strand, on Thursday night.
“We hit them at 100,000 miles an hour and they burn up as a fiery streak,” he said.
Mr Moore said the spectacular meteor shower will be visible from 10pm on Thursday until 4am on Friday morning, although it may continue for several nights afterwards.
H/T Independent.ie