Starfall next August 11 in Marineta Cassiana

Isabel Gallego, Councilor for Youth, and Juanjo Ortuño, president of the Astronomical Association Marina Alta, announced yesterday the scheduled event to see the Perseid meteor shower, better known as the Tears of San Lorenzo.

For this, an area will be enabled Marineta Cassiana from Dénia, next Saturday 11 in August, at 22.30 hours. "The street lighting will be turned off so that the sky can be observed better," said Gallego.

The event, as explained Gallego, claims that "our citizens and tourists enjoy Dénia constellations and can make wishes to the falling stars". This activity is part of Llunàtics this summer program held several workshops related to astronomy with the collaboration of the Astronomical Association Marina Alta. "The 27 July day we held a workshop observation of the night sky that was very well received, which encourages us to continue with these activities," said Gallego.

TEARS OF SAN LORENZO

Although not the largest meteor shower, the Perseid shower is the most watched and popular in the northern hemisphere as it takes place in summer period, the 17 24 July to August. Also this meteor shower is called the Tears of St. Lawrence because the 10 August is the day of this saint so that in the Middle Ages shooting stars were associated with the tears that spilled San Lorenzo to be burned at the stake.

Way to a meteor shower

"The rain of stars happens because a comet, in this case the comet Swift-Tuttle, detaches meteorites in its path", explained Ortuño. These meteorites, to get rid of the comet, despite having the size of a grain of sand and disintegrate at 100 kilometers high, we can see them because when they hit the atmosphere they leave that luminous trace that we call "shooting star".
Swift Tuttle comet has a diameter of 10 kilometers and its orbit through the sun is 135 years. "The last time I went through the land was in 1992, leaving the following year a zenithal hourly rate (number of meteors per hour) of 300 meteor," said astronomer. Since then the comet has been losing density and volume, currently the zenithal hourly rate is 100 comet meteors / hour.