How to see the Perseid meteor shower at Peak Brilliance this week

Tonight, or in the in the wee hours of tomorrow morning you will be able to see the best of Perseid meteor shower. The best and longest heavenly spectacle of summer peaks August 11-13, bringing Howling Stones through the Aether at a faster rate than at any other time during the six week shower.

Although the Perseids have been flying over our heads regularly for almost a month, now the perfect time to venture outside for peak stargazing.

What are the Perseids?

As Lifehacker noted in early summer, the Perseids are the annual visual feast of the season, a six-week procession of burning rocks that follow in the wake of the comet 109P / Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. We’You’re lucky to catch trash from the Swift-Tuttle, as it’s a behemoth with a 16 mile radius. Given its size, meteoroids break away from the larger boulder and create the Perseids, which keep astronomers staring into the sky for most of the summer.

The shower is named after its radiant constellation, Perseus, named after the Greek demigod who was famous for killing the monster Medusa and thus gave a home among the stars when he died. Over a typical evening, the shower will send around 60 howling boulders across the cosmos per hour. This increases during peak showering, when around 100 per hour become visible.

How? ‘Or’ What see the Perseids

As with all meteor showers, it’s important to make sure you’re in an area free from light pollution. You want cloudy skies and, if possible, a beautiful secluded place to enjoy the show. This’It will be easier if you are in an area without a lot of buildings, because sskyscrapers and streetlights will spoil your chances of seeing the Perseids at the highest point.

Most of all, you go want to venture outside from midnight to dawn, as EarthSky notes. The space and science publication details some of the best practices for catching Perseids:

[Between midnight and dawn is] when the part of the Earth you are standing on is heading toward the flow of meteors in space. So you will see more meteors. At dawn, it will rain from above. Be aware that the Perseid meteors will begin to fly in the middle of the evening from northern latitudes. South of the equator, the Perseids begin to crisscross the sky around midnight.

It’s not something that you should hope to end in a few minutes. The meteor shower deserves your time and patience, so expect to spend at least an hour under the stars to give yourself a chance to see something shiny.