August 11, 1999
Long before your first heartbeat, stars were busy forging the elements you would one day call your own.
A Meteor Over the Anza-Borrego Desert
Birthday · August 11, 1999
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APOD published August 11, 1999. Credit: Jerry Schad (SDMC). A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Meteors will be flashing across your skies over the next two nights. Specifically, the Perseid Meteor Shower should be at its best just before each morning's dawn. Observers at dark locations might see as much as a meteor a minute. Perseid meteors are bits of dirt that blew off Comet Swift-Tuttle and that burn up as they fall to Earth. Exciting expectations of a new filament in the Perseids might be tested this year. Pictured above is a meteor from the most active meteor shower of last year: the Leonids. Pictured above, a Leonid meteor was caught in November outshining even the brightest stars over the Anza-Borrego Desert in California. The Leonids will peak again this November and might provide an ever better show.
Image credit: Jerry Schad (SDMC)