The annual Perseid Meteor shower will be at its peak over the next couple of nights, so be sure to look up.
Backyard Astronomer Gary Boyle says on August 11th and 12th, with a clear sky, you’ll be able to see them starting at around 10 pm.
“It looks like a shooting star. That’s all it really is. Either space debris or part of the solar system re-entering the earth’s atmosphere and then burning up. It really is just many shooting stars, around 100 per hour. Go out and enjoy Mother Nature’s greatest show,” Boyle says.
He adds the best time to see them is at around 2 am, “As Earth rotates on its axis and the Constellation gets higher and higher at night, that’s the best time to see the most meteors.”
Boyle says with the number of streaks in the sky, you may be wondering if these meteors land on earth.
“They are pretty much the size of a grain of sand, and once they vaporize in the upper atmosphere and make that long tube of plasma that we see, the streak, it’s gone,” Boyle says.
Meteor showers were visible starting on July 17th, but the next two days are the peak nights.
They’ll continue until August 26th.
