It’s the best meteor shower of this year for many reasons. First, the Perseids are one of the year’s best showers. In the dark countryside, you may see 60 to 100 meteors or “shooting stars” an hour.
On top of that, the warm August nights make viewing the Perseids a true pleasure. As with any good show, you have the will to give up some sleep, but I guarantee it’ll be worth it. The Perseid meteor shower has been going pretty well for the last week, but it peaks this coming Sunday night into Monday morning (Aug.
11-12). If it happens to be cloudy, the night of Aug. 12-13 should be almost as good.
This year will be a fantastic spectacle because there won’t be much white-washing moonlight in the sky. Traveling away from city lights is well worth it to view and enjoy the Perseids from the darkest sky possible. The Perseid meteor shower is one of several dozen annual meteor showers, but it’s undoubtedly one of the most prolific.
Most meteor showers occur when the Earth, as it moves in its path around the sun, encounters debris trails left behind by comets. These comets, as they pass by the sun in their highly elongated orbits, release some of the dust and rocks trapped in their frozen cores. The ammunition for the Perseid meteor shower comes from Comet Swift-Tuttle, which swings by this part of the solar system every 133 years and made its last pass in 1992.
Some heavier rocks are in the debris trail, but mostly, there are dust to gravel-sized pebbles that slam into E.