Oh noz, the sky is falling.
The “ping” you just heard was a 61.25 MHz TV signal bouncing off the meteor’s ionized tail. Ashcraft keeps an antenna trained on the sky so that he can record the echos and lay them down as soundtracks for his all-sky movies. “I’m sure I’ll record many more in the days ahead,” he says. “Highlights will be posted here.”
According to the International Meteor Organization, about 10 Perseids per hour are now streaking across the night sky: data. This number could increase to as many as 200 per hour when Earth crosses an anticipated filament of comet dust around 0800 UT (1 a.m. PDT) on August 12th. Observing tips and a sky map may be found in the Science@NASA story “The Perseids are Coming.”