Perseids Meteor Shower: Tonight's the Night

Perseids Meteor Shower: Tonight's the Night

Tonight is the "best" night, in terms of sheer numbers of visible meteors per hour,

to see the Perseids. The Perseids are the dust and debris from the Comet Swift-Tuttle, and an annual August event. The moon will be fairly bright; it's a 55% Gibbous moon, so you'll want to avoid looking directly at the moon, since it's just as much a distracting source of light pollution as city and traffic lights are. It's a good night to find a quiet, safe, away-from-city lights spot, and spread a blanket on the ground, and watch for "shooting stars." No particular patch of sky will be "better" than another, but a fair number will be meteors; you'll see their "tails" pointing back at their source in the constellation Perseus, much as this diagram suggests. Around 9 to 11pm, your local time, both the moon and Perseus will be lower in the sky, to the North; that means that there will be less glare from the moon to distract you. At around 1am, the largest number of the Perseids are expected to be visible, as many as 80 to 200 an hour.

Keep in mind that some of the streaks you'll see are man-made communication and spy satellites; you can double check using the satellite tracking page here. Spaceweather.com has already started posting images taken by people of this year's Perseid shower here. There are some viewing suggestions here.