A free stargazing activity is to take place on Lovers’ Day (七夕情人節) on Tuesday at the Taipei Astronomical Museum, highlighting two famous stars featured in the Qixi (七夕) story, the museum said.
The museum said there will be two large optical telescopes available between 7pm and 9pm that day for the public to look at the stars Altair and Vega, known as the “cowherd” and the “weaver girl” in the love story.
According to the legend, the couple was banished to the opposite sides of the Silver River (the Milky Way) because their romance was forbidden. Once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, a flock of magpies forms a bridge to reunite the lovers for one day.
The museum plans to run introductions to the night sky and stargazing lessons at 7:30pm, 8pm and 8:30pm, it said, inviting the public to experience the romantic holiday from a different perspective.
In related news, the museum said stargazers could be treated to a spectacular Perseid meteor shower show on Thursday and Friday, with likely double the number of shooting stars compared with previous years.
Considered one of the most prolific meteor showers each year — alongside the Quadrantids in January and the Geminids in December — the Perseid is due to peak between 10pm on Thursday and sunrise the next day, with more than 150 meteors per hour forecast.
The Perseid meteor shower forms as a result of Earth’s passage through debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle and it will experience what astronomers call an “outburst” this year as the comet’s dust trails will be pulled closer by Jupiter’s gravity, the museum said.
That means that the Earth would orbit closer to the comet’s dust trail, it said.
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