Lake Afton Public Observatory is planning a special event for the viewing of the Perseid meteor shower. The observatory is operated by the Fairmount Center for Science and Mathematics Education at 黑洞社区.
The Perseid meteor shower occurs annually when the Earth passes through material left behind by Comet Temple-Tuttle. As the month of August begins, you may notice more shooting stars than usual streaking across the sky appearing to come out of the constellation Perseus. In outlying areas around Wichita or other Kansas cities, peak activity should reveal as many as 30 to 60 meteors/hour; in other words, an average of one meteor every minute or two. The peak of the activity for the shower will take place in the early morning hours of August 12.
For this special event, the observatory will be open to visitors from 2:30 to 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, August 12. During this time we will have the observatory鈥檚 16-inch telescope pointed at Jupiter, star clusters, clouds of interstellar gas, and a pair of galaxies passing very close to each other. In honor of the meteor 鈥渟hower鈥�, anyone who comes with some form of appropriate shower attire -- a rain coat, an umbrella, a bar of soap, a towel, etc. -- will receive $1 off admission. The best advice for meteor watchers is just to lay back and patiently watch the sky, so, bring your blankets, lawn chairs, bug spray, and friends to watch the show.
Background
Almost everyone has looked up at the sky and seen a falling star. Of course you are not actually seeing a star that's falling. What you are seeing is a meteor. On a clear dark night, away from the lights of the city, anyone can see about a half-dozen meteors every hour.
The falling stars or meteors that you see are just bits of rock that burn up when they run into Earth's atmosphere. Most of them are no larger than a grain of sand and they burn up in a fraction of a second. If you happen to see a bright meteor that lasts for more than a fraction of a second, you've probably seen something that's pebble-sized. A meteor that is fist-sized or larger will not only put on a spectacular sky show but will most likely survive the trip to the ground.
For a few nights a couple of dozen times each year, you can go out and see anywhere from a dozen to a few dozen meteors per hour. This is a meteor shower. The most intense, and thus the best known, is the Perseid meteor shower which occurs each year around August 12.
To understand where these particles come from we have to understand a little bit about comets. The easiest way to describe a comet, especially when it is in the frigid depths of the solar system, billions of miles away from the sun, is to think of a dirty snowball; that is a dirty snowball that's 10 miles across. This dirty snowball is the nucleus of the comet. As this comet nucleus approaches the sun, the sun's heat warms its surface, and it begins to boil. As the ice boils off, dust particles, are released. This gas and dust is pushed away from the comet's nucleus by sunlight and the solar wind to form a tail. Over the course of time the dust particles move away from the comet's nucleus. If this particular comet orbits the sun, then these dust particles continue to orbit the sun in roughly the same orbit as the comet from which they came. When Earth passes through one of these particle streams, the dust particles run into our atmosphere and we have a meteor shower. During the middle of August, Earth passes through a group of particles from the Comet Swift-Tuttle, giving us the Perseid meteors.
Location
The Lake Afton Public Observatory is located about 20 miles southwest of downtown Wichita on MacArthur Road at 247th Street West in Lake Afton County Park. It is immediately north of the lake, just off MacArthur Road. Lake Afton can be reached by any of the following routes:
1. West from Wichita on U.S. 54 to the Lake Afton sign at Viola Road (three miles past Goddard), then three miles south and one mile east.
2. Southwest on K-42 seven miles to Schulte and then nine miles west on MacArthur.
3. West from Wichita on MacArthur.
Admission
Admission to the Lake Afton Public Observatory is $4 for adults and $3 for children ages 6-12; children under 6 are admitted free. We also have a special family admission where 2 adults and their immediate children or grandchildren get in for just $12. Current evening programs and times along with events taking place in the sky are available in a recorded message by calling 黑洞社区-STAR (978-7827).