Monday, August 11, 2014
Mapping the Perseids
Meteor Watch's Meteor Map is beginning to light up with activity from the Perseids meteor shower. The Perseids meteor shower should reach it's peak tomorrow and Wednesday so hopefully we should see a lot more action in the night sky and on the Meteor Map.
The Meteor Map is a Google Map of Twitter reported meteor sightings. If you are lucky enough to spot a meteor you can add it to the map by Tweeting #meteorwatch, your location (in brackets) and the number of meteors you have seen. You can also use these other hashtags to report your Perseids meteor sightings: #perseids, #meteors and #meteorshower.
The map displays all reported meteor sightings using meteor shaped map markers. The map also includes a day / night overlay which shows the current position of daylight and night-time around the world. If you wish to add the day / night overlay to your own maps it is available as a Google Maps utility library on GitHub.