The August Beta Piscids meteor shower
Key facts
- Peak
- around 13 August
- Active
- about 1–24 August
- Rate at peak (ZHR)
- very low (detected mainly by video)
- Speed
- about 40 km/s
- Radiant
- Pisces (near the star Beta Piscium, in the Circlet below the Great Square of Pegasus)
- Parent body
- Unknown
Dates shift slightly from year to year. This year's peak is in the events calendar.
The August Beta Piscids are a weak shower that peaks on the same night as the Perseids. Almost no one notices them by eye, but camera networks have picked them out from among the much richer Perseid display.
Discovery. The shower was one of eleven found by the Tokyo observer Takashi Kanamori in 2009, using two years of video data from several sites in Japan. Meteors filmed from two stations can be given precise orbits, and Kanamori found a group from Pisces in August with closely matching orbits.
The radiant. The radiant lies near Beta Piscium, one of the stars of the Circlet, a ring of faint stars below the Great Square of Pegasus. This part of the sky rises in the east in the late evening in August and is high in the south before dawn.
What to expect. Very few meteors. They are of medium speed, at about 40 kilometres per second, which is slower than the Perseids. Because the Perseid radiant is in the north-east and this one is low in the south-east, an observer can in principle tell them apart by direction. In practice, with Perseids, Kappa Cygnids, Aquariids and sporadic meteors all in the sky, the August Beta Piscids are a job for cameras.
The parent. No parent body has been identified.
Why it matters. The shower shows that even a famous night like the Perseid peak contains meteors from many sources. Video networks now routinely sort each night's meteors into dozens of showers by comparing their orbits, and this is how weak streams like this one are confirmed.
Viewing. The radiant is close to the celestial equator, so it can be seen from both hemispheres. From the UK it is best placed in the hours before dawn.
Viewing tips
- Watch the Perseids and look out for slower meteors from the south-east.
- Find the Circlet of Pisces below the Great Square of Pegasus.
- Trace each meteor back: Perseids point to the north-east.
- Use a camera to record possible members for later analysis.
- Observe in the hours before dawn, when Pisces is highest.