Most Perseids will average about 60 to 90 an hour but this year the forecast is for about 100 to maybe 200 meteors an hour.
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NASA officials suggest making plans now to stay up late or set the alarm early August 11 to see a cosmic display of “shooting stars” light up the night sky.
The annual Perseid meteor shower is anticipated to be one of the best meteor viewing opportunities of the year. Thanks to a gravity nudge from Jupiter, debris from comet Swift-Tuttle could stray closer to Earth again.
An outburst of Perseid meteors lights up the sky in August 2009 in this time-lapse image. This year it is predicted the shower will peak on the overnight of Thursday, Aug. 11, to Friday, Aug. 12.
The Perseid Meteor Shower is returning to Metro Vancouver skies this week and will be most visible Thursday night. As the Earth moves around the sun, it sometimes encounters a rich lode of debris when it crosses the path of a comet.
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Although the outbursts can be spectacular, most of the meteors are only the size of a grain of sand, or as large as a small pebble, before they burn up in our atmosphere. The reason they are called the Perseids is because they seem to radiate from the constellation Perseus. You’ll want to wait until the moon is below the horizon around 12:45 a.m. Friday and give yourself plenty of time to allow your eyes to dark-adapt (30-45 minutes). NASA recommends going outside between midnight and dawn on Friday morning. Meteors will appear all over the sky, so it’s best to lie down and look up high – taking in as much sky as possible. Increased activity also may be seen Friday night into early Saturday.
