How to see the Perseid meteor shower as it peaks this week
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The Perseid meteor shower peaks this week, and it's sure to be one of the best cosmic shows of the year.
The big picture: The Perseids grace our skies each year at around this time when the Earth passes through the stream of dust and rock debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle.
How it works: The meteor shower is expected to peak on Saturday night into the wee hours of Sunday morning.
- It should be pretty dark during the peak as well, thanks to the Moon being near its new phase.
- Theoretically, there should be about 100 meteors passing through Earth's atmosphere per hour, "but in practice, you never see that," NASA's Bill Cooke tells me. "Well away from city lights, where you can see the Milky Way and a bunch of stars, you'll probably see somewhere between 40 and 50 Perseids per hour at the peak."
- Many of those meteors should be pretty bright as well, according to Cooke. The Perseids are known for creating the most fireballs — exceptionally bright meteors — of any annual meteor shower.
The big picture: Meteor showers are perhaps the most accessible cosmic events each year.
- You don't need telescopes or binoculars to see the meteor shower, just a comfy place to lie down and look up under relatively cloudless and dark skies.
Yes, but: Don't look at your phone.
- Looking at the bright screen of a phone can ruin night vision, making it harder to see meteors when you look back at the sky.
- When picking a spot to watch the shower, also make sure to lie down facing away from the Moon as that can wash out the sky a bit, even in its crescent phase.
- "Perseids appear anywhere on the sky, and actually you want to avoid looking at the constellation of Perseus — where they appear to come from," Cooke said. "Meteors that show up near Perseus have shorter trails — they leave shorter streaks of light and are harder to spot."
Between the lines: While it's best (and worth the trip) to get away from city lights to see the Perseids, you can still expect to catch at least a few in light-polluted areas.
- If you are city-bound, get somewhere with the widest view of the sky possible and settle in for a long wait.
- If you can only see some stars and the Big Dipper in your night sky, you can expect to see "a Perseid every 10 minutes," Cooke said.
Background: Comet Swift-Tuttle orbits the Sun once every 133 years. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli was the first to connect the comet to the Perseids.
- The meteor shower itself, however, has been observed for thousands of years.
Be smart: Meteoroids are bits of dust and rock in space. Meteors are meteoroids that enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks of light. Meteorites are any small pieces of rock that make it all the way to the ground.
