METEORS SHOWER THE SKY; HUNDREDS MAY BE VISIBLE WEDNESDAY

A meteor shower producing about one a minute will be visible Wednesday night.

But Craig Joseph, assistant professor of physics at Southeast Missouri State University, said a chance exists for the meteor shower to become a storm in which hundreds or even thousands of meteors would be visible.

Meteors are tiny pieces of rocky debris left over from a comet, Joseph explained.

Wednesday's Perseid meteor shower is caused by the Swift Tuttle comet. The earth runs into debris left over from the comet each year on Aug. 11.

"The debris and orbit of that comet are not evenly distributed," Joseph said. "It appears we are going to pass through a denser clump of junk this year."

That means a more spectacular meteor display. "We are predicting a meteor storm in some parts of the world," he said.

It's not clear when the peak of the shower will be. The best estimates are that it will probably happen during daylight hours in North America.

"There is a possibility for our location that we would see a meteor storm, up to several hundred meteors per minute," Joseph said.

Joseph said the best time to watch the meteors here will be in the late evening hours until moonrise, around 1 a.m.

No special equipment is needed.

"Just lay on your back and look up," Joseph said. "Many people would be tempted to use binoculars and telescopes. Don't. You want your own eyeballs to see the entire sky at once."

Those looking for meteors should stay away from brightly lit areas.

The Leonid meteor shower, visible in the Western U.S. in 1966, was the last really spectacular such event. "They were counting thousands per minute," Joseph said.

He added that the comet responsible for Wednesday's shower could collide with the earth in 2026.

"It's a possibility. Certainly it will make a very close pass that year," he said.