Perseids Meteor Shower

This is one of the best showers of the year, producing up to 60 meteors per hour at its peak. This year, a first quarter moon will block the fainter meteors, but it should set shortly after midnight, leaving you with dark skies for the rest of the show. Although the predicted peak falls during the night of August 11-12, it has a long range: from July 14 to September 1. So, you can start watching for these meteors in the early August morning hours. You can also look after the peak in August, after sunset -- though the full moon will likely get in the way.

The Perseid meteor shower is perhaps the most beloved meteor shower of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a rich and steady shower. These fast and bright meteors radiate from a point in the constellation Perseus the Hero. As with all meteor shower radiant points, you don’t need to know Perseus to watch the shower. Instead, the meteors appear in all parts of the sky, frequently leaving persistent trails. Perseid meteors tend to strengthen in number from midnight to the wee hours before dawn.

These meteors are the result of our passing through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle. For a while, astronomers calculated that this comet would collide with the Earth during the Perseids in 2126. Such an impact would have spoiled any stargazing since the comet is the largest near-Earth object that periodically passes through our sky. If Swift-Tuttle ever does hit the Earth, its 60 km/s impact will be about 27 times more energetic than the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs.