The best way to see the Perseids is to go outside between midnight and dawn.
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The Perseid meteor shower put up on a lovely show overnight when it peaked with as many as 200 meteors per hour flying through the night sky. Named by Time.com one of the best weather apps for your iPhone. Joshua Tree or Big Bear offer some of the best pollution-free places to view the meteor shower around Southern California. The Perseids are tiny pieces of icy debris that are left in the trail of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. This year stargazers can expect to see almost twice as many meteors, in part, because Jupiter passed through the trail creating an increase in debris and dust.
The annual Perseid meteor shower will peak the next couple of nights in the skies over the ArkLaTex. While the Earth moves through the trail, viewers can see a streak of lime light and falling stars that is caused when burning debris enters the atmosphere.
“These meteors are called Perseids because they seem to fly out of the constellation Perseus”, NASA writes. Jupiter’s gravity has herded the comet debris into an unusually dense clump, and the result should be an “outburst” of up to 200 meteors or so per hour during tonight’s peak, NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke has said. The idea is to see as much of the sky as possible – from as dark of a spot as possible – since meteors shoot through the sky from different spots. “And they’ve traveled billions of miles before their kamikaze run into Earth’s atmosphere”.
Although Perseid meteors are a regular attraction in August, the last outburst was in 2009.
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And, if bright city lights or clouds are blocking the view, NASA has you covered for that, too.
