This year, the moon is a thin waning crescent so moonlight won’t overwhelm the meteor shower.
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Earth passes through the comet’s dust every year around this time.
“The Perseids are one of the most plentiful showers (50-100 meteors seen per hour) and occurs with warm summer nighttime weather, allowing sky watchers to easily view the shower”, continued NASA.
The Perseids meteor shower will have eyes on the sky for the next few nights.
The Perseids are known to have very bright, fast moving meteors leaving those long streaks across the sky.
The best way to see it is to lie down and look up, no telescopes needed.
The meteors will become more common after midnight, and peak just before dawn.
Areas away from light pollution will offer the clearest views, but he said amateur stargazers can grab a deckchair and have a little patience in their back gardens. The show will air from 9 p.m. CDT Wednesday night until 1 a.m. CDT Thursday morning.
Although the shower is yet to reach its peak, space enthusiasts have already pointed their cameras at the sky and managed to photograph a handful of meteors.
The Perseid meteor shower is happening right now and NASA says it’s expected to be one of the best in years.
The shower takes place starting at the end of July and extends through most of August.
So here’s everything you need to know about the rare natural phenomenon.
The meteor is the flash of light you see from debris burning up as it enters the atmosphere, not the debris itself.
The major meteor shower will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere.
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The Perseids are named after the constellation of Perseus, because the meteors appear to originate from this single point (or radiant) when watching them from the ground.
