Sky Matters: It's August so it's time to look out for Perseids
Digital composite of 50 photographs taken over a period of 25 minutes. Meteors and star trails during the Perseid meteor shower seen from near Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, as the Earth flies through a cloud of cometary dust creating a spectacular display of celestial fireworks.
We are very fortunate to live at a time in human history when we have a comprehensive understanding of many of the objects in the night sky; how they came into being and how — and when — they will cease to exist.
Much of what we know, we have learned only in the last 150–200 years. The path to this knowledge has been far from straightforward. It is littered with theories that failed to stand up to close scrutiny, with observations that only told part of the story and indeed sometimes led us on the celestial equivalent of a wild goose chase. Nevertheless, through the fundamental self-correcting approach that is the very essence of the scientific method, only the best theories, supported by the best observations, have survived and brought us to where we are today.
