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The Bay Area will have a blast this week as the meteor shower considered the best of the year by NASA scientists is expected to peak on Wednesday night.
The Perseid meteor shower will peak between 11 p.m. Wednesday and 3 a.m. Thursday, according to the Oakland-based Chabot Space & Science Center. Astronomers can expect to see up to 100 meteors per hour.
“The Moon will set early on the evening of the 11th, so we’ll have dark skies and potentially very good viewing conditions,” Gerald McKeegan, astromer at Chabot Space & Science Center, wrote in a blog post.
The Perseids are active between July 14 and August 24 and peak in mid-August at night in hot weather, according to NASA. They are created by small pieces of space debris – dust, boulders and pebbles – from comet Swift-Tuttle, which takes 133 years to rotate around the sun.
The debris then creates a flow of particles that also orbit the sun.
“As these particles enter and burn in Earth’s atmosphere, we experience a meteor shower,” McKeegan wrote.
You won’t need a telescope or binoculars to observe shooting stars. McKeegan said all you have to do is find a clear sky away from the city lights.
If you can, McKeegan recommended that you grab a blanket and lie down in a grassy field on top of a mountain for the best views.
Jessica Flores is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @jesssmflores
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