This year’s shower is estimated to have a higher number of meteors per hour at its peak, which will also occur quite close to the radiant rise. “So the rates are going to double this year”.
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A Perseid meteor streaks across the sky above desert pine trees on August 13, 2015 in the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area, Nevada. This year’s shower will comprise debris streams from 1862, 1479 and 1079, brought together by gravitational interference from Jupiter’s orbit for a particularly impressive Perseids not seen since 2009, Fraknoi said. And Cooke tells Nell that “another outburst like this isn’t expected until 2027 or so”.
“They can produce some very spectacular meteors”, Cooke said about the Perseids.
Each year, dirt from Swift-Tuttle intercepts Earth’s atmosphere about 60 miles above ground at speeds that burn even a small speck into an eye-catching flash of light – a shooting star. The meteors are called Perseids because they seem to fly out the constellation Perseus. That means instead of Earth moving through the edge of the comet’s trail, it will move more towards the center and as a result, forecasters expect more meteors will be visible this year, Pryor said. Fireballs are brighter than the planet Venus, and a Perseid fireball can light up the ground like a brief spotlight. For city residents, it might help to try to go somewhere in the country.
Let your eyes adjust for 30-40 minutes to maximize your night vision. “I would suggest just lying on your back and taking in as much of the sky as possible”, she says. You will want to start by looking to the northeast Thursday night into early Friday morning but direction really isn’t all that important. Those in Darwin will have the best chance, followed by Cairns and Brisbane, with the top viewings in Australia having the potential to show a meteor every two minutes or so. It’ll be easiest to see the meteors after the moon sets in the early hours of Friday, according to NASA. In a nutshell, if you’re watching the skies during peak Perseid activity, you could see as many as 200 meteors every single hour. Ideally, low light (read: away from the city), a less-than-full moon, and minimal cloud cover.
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You can even record your Perseid meteor shower experience for perpetuity. NASA will be live overnight on Thursday and Friday, starting at 10 p.m. ET.
