Unexpected Perseid Meteor Outburst on 14 August 2021

> The Perseid Filament is a ribbon of dust inside the broader Perseid debris zone. Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle supplies the raw material. The comet loops around the sun every 133 years, shedding dust as it goes. Over time, much of Swift-Tuttle’s dust is perturbed by the gravity of Jupiter, helping scatter it into the diffuse cloud that we experience every year as the Perseid meteor shower. But there is a part of the comet’s orbit in a “mean motion resonance” with Jupiter where dust can accumulate instead of dispersing. This is the Perseid Filament.

> Forecasters still can’t predict when the Perseid Filament will return. It came for many years in a row around 1993, and it may have grazed Earth again, slightly, in 2018, 2019 and 2020. No one predicted a direct hit in 2021.

I find it amazing that over 4 decades ago humanity launched Voyager 1 on a trajectory that led it out of the solar system - yet today we're being startled by unforeseen and intense meteor showers from our own planetary neighborhood. Don't get me wrong, the small scale of these objects and the complex dynamics governing their motion does seem like a hard problem to solve. But the whole situation leaves me with a feeling of awe - both for what we have achieved and what we have yet to understand.

I saw a really brilliant meteor while driving on the night of the 15th over southwest MO. It was as bright as a medium-sized firework explosion, green in color, and much larger than a streak. More of a shower of sparks than a shooting star. I wish I'd thought to be out observing the sky on the 14th.