MIKE MILLER
Observing Perseid meteor shower reveals how much we light up our sky
The night of Aug. 13 turned out to be perfect to look towards the skies. Crystal clear atmosphere, and the lack of a moon provided a great opportunity to view the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. Each year in August, the Earth passes through a debris field of a comet known as “Swift-Tuttle.” This debris trail is made up of dust and small particles laid down by the comet as it sweeps around the sun on its 133-year orbit. The last time it was in our orbital neighborhood was 1865. It is called the “Perseids” because of the region of the sky that most of these shooting stars are visible radiate from near the constellation Perseus. The peak activity this year was projected to be Aug. 13 from midnight to
4 a.m. with a frequency of dozens of shooting stars per hour.
When you sit back and attentively look at the night sky, you realize just how immense the universe really is. The light we see from the stars have taken millennia, in many cases, to reach the Earth. Even the closest star to Earth (not including the Sun) is more than 24 trillion miles away. Through the vantage point of these great distances, our night sky seems static. However, The close proximity of our meteor shower gives evidence that space is not an empty void. As you wait for shooting stars, you notice other lights in the night sky. Planes fly overhead on their 30,000-foot flight path. The sound of their jet engines lags well behind their position in the sky. Their blinking lights stand out against the pinpoints of starlight.
Higher in the heavens, outside of the protective atmosphere of the Earth, a long train of lights traverse across the darkness. Starlink satellites reflect the sunlight from their orbit some 340 miles above the Earth surface. There are some 4,500 of these small satellites currently in low-Earth orbit, with more on the way. Add to this the 7,000+ high orbit satellites and it becomes obvious that the night sky is swarming with points of moving light. In fact, as you sit and observe the Perseids, you can easily find one of these satellites at any moment.
It is amazing to think that within one lifetime, the space around Earth has become so crowded. On Oct. 3, 1957, there were no satellites orbiting our Earth. The very next day, Sputnik 1 started its three-week voyage and orbited the Earth 1,440 times. It was an event that heralded the beginning of the space age. It also forever changed the observable points of light that inhabit our night sky.
As I watch the “Perseids” leave their effervescent trails across the heavens, my mind wanders back to the satellites, and I ponder the gains we have made since the days of Sputnik. These new heavenly interlopers have changed almost every aspect of our daily lives. From their vantage point, we know more today about the Earth than ever before. We also can communicate with each other in ways that were considered science fiction just a few decades ago. We have become very clever, but have we become any wiser?
Our satellites can tell us just how fast our climate is changing. Through their lenses we see hurricanes with children’s names write our history. Wildfires rage across the land to be starved by barren soil. Early warning systems sound the alarm that should spur us into action. They scream of the human origin of our warming climate. Those facts are gathered by the very satellites with which we populated the heavens. Yet, we ignore our own messengers. Instead, we use valuable bandwidth to argue and dissemble the truths. We run the risk of becoming a modern-day reincarnation of Icarus. Do we live in a world where we ignore wisdom and fly too close to the Sun, only to be grounded with our heads firmly buried in the sand?
Unfortunately, I don’t receive any answers from the night sky. As the Perseids continue their show, their beauty and grace outshine the satellites, and remind us that there are some constants in the universe. If we can look up and wonder at the night sky, there is still hope that we will learn to fly without getting our wings burned.