The Perseids as seen from the International Space Station.
NASA
One of the best shooting-star shows of the year (at least in the northern hemisphere) is upon us again with the arrival of the Perseid meteor shower.
The Perseids are set to peak late Sunday, August 12 into the early morning of Monday, August 13, but the spectacle is already beginning to heat up in the dark, mostly moonless evenings.
You might be able to catch a handful or maybe even a dozen meteors per hour in the weeknights leading up to the main event that will coincide roughly with the new moon (meaning the moon is absent from the night sky) on Saturday evening. That’s when the peak will start to build as Earth drifts through the most dense part of a cloud of cosmic debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which passes by our planet and the sun once every 133 years.
Every year, in mid-August, Earth passes collides with particles spread along the orbit of Comet Swift-Tuttle.
Sky and Telescope
The Perseids appear to emanate from between the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia, but to catch them there’s really no need to worry about which direction you’re looking. Find a comfortable spot with as a wide a view of the night sky as possible, preferably away from light pollution, and just relax, lie back and look up. Don’t forget to allow some time for your eyes to adjust to the dark.
During the maximum, or peak, Sunday night and early Monday morning, it could be possible to catch as many as 110 meteors in an hour, or nearly two per minute on average. Astronomy Magazine recommends getting up early to try viewing the shower in the last dark hour before dawn, but it’s worth looking up at any hour after dusk.
Part of the reason the Perseids really sizzle in the summer sky in the northern hemisphere isn’t the seasonal heat, but rather their speed, which can be nearly 60 kilometers per second (134,000 miles per hour).
There’s no need to worry about meteors raining down on you, though, as Sky and Telescope says the bright streaks of the Perseids burning up are actually about 80 miles (128,748 meters) above your head and created by pieces of space debris about the size of a small pebble.
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