Perseid Meteor Shower Storms Twitter, YouTube

The Perseid meteor shower lit up the sky and the Internet last night.

The global village that is the Internet gave stargazers from around the world an opportunity to share in realtime one of astronomy's epochal annual events on Twitter, YouTube and a host of other social networking and content sharing sites.

The Newbury Astronomical Society in the United Kingdom held a "Twitter Meteorwatch" party with thousands of stargazers from around the world Tweeting live pictures of the celebrated annual meteor shower.

"Everyone is welcome to join in, whether they are an astronomer or just have an interest in the night sky," said the Newbury Astronomical Society. "Use the hash tag: #Meteorwatch and get involved, ask questions, follow the event and enjoy the night sky with us. Images and other information will be tweeted as it happens. Live!"

The Twitter meteor watch party brought together users from around the world sharing images and raving about the Perseid meteor shower via the popular micro-blogging site.

"The party continues!" exclaimed Twitter user Ksastro pointing to the latest picture of a bright Perseid shower. That twitpic photo is a crystal clear shot of the meteor shower under the heading: "Brightest Perseid I have photographed tonight!"

Not all Twitter users were so lucky. "Wow I didn't see any and I was up all night waiting to see one go buy [sic]," said Matter of Matt.

A search of YouTube under Perseid brought up 219 results with a breathtaking array of videos from nightvision cameras and time lapse videos.

Nickmeanssuper, a young man, invited users to join him in a YouTube video posted from his balcony. "It's like 1:00 a.m. right now and everyone is going crazy right now on Twitter and Facebook about the meteor shower that is going on right now," he said. "So we got to go check this out. You guys come with me!"

"Wow!" he exclaimed with his video camera pointed to the sky. "Look at all the meteors!"

That kind of ability to share the Perseid meteor shower experience on Twitter, YouTube and other internet sites signals once again just how much the Internet has forever changed the world.