Get ready for shooting stars and fireballs: The annual Perseid meteor shower is approaching its high point, with the peak expected before dawn on Monday, according to the American Meteorological Society. The meteor shower lasts from mid-July until the end of August, but most nights only feature a few meteors per hour. At the peak, there's sometimes a few dozen per hour, but some years bring bursts of up to 200 shooting stars an hour, NASA says. The space agency says the Perseids are also known for fireballs—"larger explosions of light and color that can persist longer than an average meteor streak."
NASA suggests getting out of town to "find the darkest location you can." Hunter Miller at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago tells NPR that the waxing moon means viewing conditions might not be ideal this year, though "it's not so bad because the moon will be far away from where the Perseids are located in the sky." The moon will set around midnight, so "as late as you can be out, the better the views will get, the darker the sky will be." He suggests looking northward and giving your eyes around 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness. Looking at a phone's screen, however, "will basically mess up all of the time that you spent trying to let your eyes get dark-adjusted," Miller says.
The Perseids are seen every year as the Earth passes through the debris trail of Comet Swift-Tuttle. Meteor expert Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario tells NPR that unlike some meteor showers, the Perseids are "so spread out that you can see them within a day or two of the peak, and you still see a really impressive show." Space.com reports that if geomagnetic conditions are right, people in northern states might get a double show: NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a geomagnetic storm watch for Friday through Sunday, meaning the northern lights could coincide with the peak of the Perseids. (More Perseids stories.)
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