Starry Starry Night ... La night of San Lorenzo has now arrived and, as usual, there are those who will stand with their noses upwards to look at the sky in the hope of spotting some shooting star and express your wish. That of the August 10th it is in fact an unmissable event for all dreamers who wish to attend one of the most beautiful spectacles offered by nature. Of course this phenomenon does not only occur during the night of San Lorenzo. It can be observed between the second half of July and the entire following month. August 10 is traditionally the day when you can spot more shooting stars. This year the peak should be in the night between 12 and the 13 August.
The myth of the night of San Lorenzo
As everyone knows, the night of San Lorenzo is one of the nights most romantic of the year. Making a wish every time a shooting star is sighted is a very old practice. Centuries ago it was believed in fact that the destiny of man was already written in the stars. In fact, sighting a shooting star and making a wish meant having the opportunity to change your future. Although this (false) belief has now been forgotten, people still continue to make a wish every time a shooting star is seen in the sky. Another popular belief associates these stars with tears of San Lorenzo, deacon of Rome, martyred on August 10, 258 AD. at the behest of the emperor Valeriano. The "tears" would actually be i burning embers which caused the saint's death. Of course there is a scientific explanation behind this phenomenon, less poetic than the previous ones, but more truthful and reliable.
The Perseids and the Swift-Tuttle comet
The first thing to know about the night of San Lorenzo is that those we see in the sky are not "stars", but meteors calls "Perseids”(Since the radian, that is the point of appearance, is inside the constellation of Perseus). This meteor shower originates from the comet Swift-Tuttle. It is a gigantic one periodic comet of the Solar System with a diameter of approx 10 kilometersthat swarm of the Perseids it was already visible in 36 AD in China, but he was the Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli in 1862 to discover the correlation between the comet and the meteors. The latter would in fact be debris left by the comet that burn once it enters the earth's atmosphere and give life to the phenomenon of "shooting stars". The peculiarity of the Perseids is theirs brightness and the ability to be seen with the naked eye, especially when in places with little light.
As already mentioned, the shooting stars (or the Perseids) are not only visible during the night of San Lorenzo, but between July and August. On maximum nights, it might be possible to see up to 100 shooting stars per hour. To better observe the show it is recommended to go to a completely dark place, away from city lights, from 22 to 4 in the morning. The best observation point is a North-East, in the direction of the constellation of Perseus (below Cassiopeia and its "shape"W"). Even if the full moon it could give a less "bright" show than in previous years, luck could help the more daring "star seekers" who are just waiting to see a glow in the sky to express their wish, in the hope that one day this will become reality.
