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All year round, as the Earth revolves around the sun, it traverses waves of cosmic debris. The resulting meteor showers can light up the night sky from dusk to dawn, and if you’re lucky you might be able to spot them.
The next shower you will be able to see is the Perseid shower. Active from July 17 to August 24, they will reach their peak of activity from Wednesday evening to Thursday morning, or from August 11 to 12.
The Perseids light up the night sky when Earth encounters cosmic debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The dirty snowball is 27 km wide and takes about 133 years to orbit the sun. His last tour dates back to 1992.
Between 160 and 200 meteors dazzle into Earth’s atmosphere every hour during peak display. They zoom into the atmosphere at about 133,000 miles per hour and erupt about 60 miles above our heads. The moon is not too full at this time, which could allow good viewing, with the most active shower before dawn according to the International Meteor Organization.
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Where do meteor showers come from
If you spot a meteor shower, what you typically see are the remains of an icy comet crashing into Earth’s atmosphere. Comets are a bit like dirty snowballs: as they travel through the solar system, they leave behind a dusty trail of rocks and ice that lingers in space long after they’ve left. As Earth passes through these cascades of cometary waste, the pieces of debris – which can be as small as grains of sand – pierce the sky with such speed that they explode, creating a heavenly firework display.
A rule of thumb with meteor showers: you never watch Earth pass each other in the remnants of a comet’s most recent orbit. Instead, the burning bits are from previous passes. So, for the Perseid meteor shower, you see meteors ejected from the visit of its parent comet, Comet Swift-Tuttle, in or before 1862, and not from its most recent visit in 1992.
That’s because it takes time for debris from a comet’s orbit to drift into a position where it intersects Earth’s orbit, according to Bill Cooke, astronomer with NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.
How to watch
The best way to see a meteor shower is to go to a location with a clear view of the entire night sky. Ideally, it would be somewhere with a dark sky, away from city lights and traffic. To maximize your chances of seeing the show, look for a location that offers a wide, unobstructed view.
Chunks of meteor shower are visible for a while, but they really visibly peak from dusk to dawn on any given days. These days are the days when Earth’s orbit crosses the thickest part of the cosmic flow. Meteor showers can vary in their peak hours, some peaking for just a few hours and others for several nights.
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