Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight: How to Watch

If you watch one meteor shower all year, then catch the overnight Perseid shooting star display tonight.

This weekend, the annual Perseid meteor shower peaks, sending hundreds of shooting stars flying through the night sky in what many experts call the best shower of the year.

"We expect to see meteor rates as high as a hundred per hour," Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office said in a statement. "The Perseids always put on a good show."

To see the Perseid meteor shower, all you need are your naked eyes and a relatively dark spot to view from. Avoid light pollution if at all possible, as city lights can obscure all but the brightest meteors. And weather conditions such as clouds can also dampen the sights, so if you catch a clear weather window, take advantage of it.

The peak of the meteor shower should occur between midnight and 9 a.m. EDT (0400 and 1300 GMT, or UT) on Sunday, Aug. 12. However, viewing during dark hours between now and the beginning of next week should provide ample meteor sights. The dark hours between Saturday night and Sunday morning should be especially fruitful for meteor hunting. [Spectacular Perseid Meteor Shower Photos]

The shooting stars will appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, named after the ancient Greek hero — hence the name Perseids.

This peak occurs as planet Earth passes through the trail of debris left behind by comet Swift-Tuttle. Bits of rock and ice from the comet slam into Earth's atmosphere, burning up to create short-lived streaks of light that we see as shooting stars. Our planet meets with Swift-Tuttle's trail every year in late July or early August.

This year's pass through the Perseids will be extra-special because of a celestial show going on now. The bright planets Jupiter and Venus, along with the crescent moon, are visible in the night sky alongside the Perseids, offering an especially dazzling sight for stargazers. These planets, and the moon, will be aligned in the eastern sky before dawn Aug. 11 to Aug. 13.

Luckily for observers, the moon should not be bright enough to obscure most meteors, but should provide a complementary celestial wonder to behold.

"Sky watchers say there's nothing prettier than a close encounter between the slender crescent moon and Venus — nothing, that is, except for the crescent moon, Venus and a flurry of Perseids," astronomer Tony Phillips wrote on the Science@NASA website.

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of the 2012 Perseid meteor shower that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send images and comments (including name and location) to managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.

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Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Halley's Comet to Put on Meteor Show Next Week (SPACE.com)

If you step outside before dawn during the next week or so, you might try to catch a view of some "cosmic litter" that has been left behind in space by Halley's Comet: the Orionid meteor shower.

The Orionids can best be described as a junior version of the famous Perseid meteor shower. This year's Orionids show is scheduled to reach its maximum before sunrise on the morning of Oct. 22. The meteors are known as "Orionids" because the fireballs seem to fan out from a region to the north of Orion's second brightest star, ruddy Betelgeuse. 

Currently, Orion appears ahead of us in our journey around the sun. The constellation does not completely rise above the eastern horizon until after 11 p.m. local daylight time. At its best, several hours later around 5 a.m., Orion will be highest in the sky toward the south.

The Orionids typically produce around 20 to 25 meteors per hour under a clear, dark sky. Orionid meteors are normally dim and not well seen from urban locations, so you'd do best to find a safe rural location to see the most Orionid activity. [Spectacular Leonid meteor shower photos]

Orionid meteors will begin to increase noticeably around Oct. 17, when they'll start appearing at about five per hour. After peaking on the morning of Oct. 22, activity will begin to slowly descend, dropping back to around five per hour around Oct. 26. The last stragglers usually appear sometime in early to mid- November.

Halley's Legacy

Halley's Comet has left a visible legacy in the form of these two annual meteor showers, one of which is the Orionids. This will be a good year to look for them, since the moon will have slimmed down to a crescent on the morning of the Orionids peak, and will not pose much of a hindrance for those watching for Orionids in 2011. This slender moon will not rise until around 2 a.m. local daylight time.

Comets are the leftovers of the solar system's creation, the odd bits and pieces of simple gases — methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide and water vapor — that went unused when the sun and its attendant planets came into their present form.  Meteoroids that are released into space out of this debris are the remnants of a comet's nucleus. All comets eventually disintegrate into meteor swarms, and Halley's is well into that process already. [Video: Meteors from Halley's Comet]

These tiny particles — mostly ranging in size from dust to sand grains — remain along the original comet's orbit, creating a "river of rubble" in space. In the case of Halley's Comet, which has likely circled the sun many hundreds, if not thousands, of times, its dirty trail of debris has been distributed more or less uniformly all along its orbit.  When these tiny bits of comet collide with Earth, friction with our atmosphere raises them to white heat and produces the effect popularly referred to as "shooting stars."

The orbit of Halley's Comet closely approaches the Earth's orbit at two places. One point is in the early part of May, producing a meteor display known as the Eta Aquarids. The other point comes in the middle to later part of October, producing the Orionids.   

What to Expect

The best time to watch begins from 1 or 2 a.m. local daylight time, until around dawn, when the shower's point of origin (in Orion's upraised club, just north of the bright red star, Betelgeuse) is highest above the horizon. The higher this point, called the radiant, the more meteors appear all over the sky.

The Orionids are one of just a handful of meteor showers that can be observed equally well from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

This meteor shower is one of the better annual displays, producing about 15 to 20 meteors per hour at its peak. Add the five to 10 sporadic meteors that always are plunging into our atmosphere and you get a maximum of about 20 to 30 meteors per hour for a dark sky location.  Most of these meteors are relatively faint, however, so any light pollution will cut the total way down.

The shower may be quite active for several days before or after its broad maximum, which may last from Oct. 20 through Oct. 24. Step outside before sunrise on any of these mornings, and if you catch sight of a meteor, there's about a 75 percent chance that it likely originated from the nucleus of Halley's Comet.

"They are easily identified … from their speed," write David Levy and Stephen Edberg in "Observe: Meteors," an Astronomical League manual.  "At 66 kilometers (41 miles) per second, they appear as fast streaks, faster by a hair than their sisters, the Eta Aquarids of May. And like the Eta Aquarids, the brightest of family tend to leave long-lasting trains. Fireballs are possible three days after maximum."

Recent studies have shown that about half of all Orionids that are seen leave trails that lasted longer than other meteors of equal brightness. This is undoubtedly connected in some way to the makeup of Halley's Comet. So it is that the shooting stars that we have come to call Orionids are really an encounter with the traces of a famous visitor from the depths of space and from the dawn of creation.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.

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Perseid Meteor Shower Dazzles Skywatchers Despite Full Moon (SPACE.com)

Skywatchers around the world caught stunning views of the Perseid meteor shower overnight Friday (Aug. 12) despite a bright full moon that threatened to outshine the annual "shooting star" display's peak.

The Perseid meteor shower is often the most dazzling meteor shower of the year, but a fluke of timing put the peak of this year's space rock light show in competition with the August full moon. But accounts from skywatchers suggest the Perseids did not disappoint, despite the moon's interference.

In Woking, Surrey, in England, skywatcher and photographer Carolyne Jackson waited patiently in her backyard, camera at the ready, for a break in the clouds in order spot a meteor. [Skywatcher Photos: The 2011 Perseid Meteor Shower]

"I kept this up for an hour and then reviewed the shots," Jackson told SPACE.com in an email. "Most contained nothing and with having a full moon and light pollution I was not expecting to see anything ... then bingo, on my 27th shot, there was this beauty." [See Jackson's Perseid meteor photo]

The Perseid meteor shower has been observed by skywatchers for at least 2,000 years, according to NASA. The meteors are actually pieces of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. The meteor shower gets its name Perseid from its origin point in the night sky: the constellation Perseus.

Every August, Earth flies through the comet's cloud of debris and the tiny bits of Swift-Tuttle (most of them more than 1,000 years old) burn up in the atmosphere as they streak at nearly 133,200 mph. According to the website Spaceweather.com, international observers reported up to 20 meteors per hour during the Perseids' peak.

"Saw 5 here in Brooklyn," New York City skywatcher Miloy Quezada wrote in a post to SPACE.com's Facebook page. "We were laying on our building's roof, my 2-yr-old couldn't figure out what his dad and I kept pointing at. At first it feels like your eyes are playing tricks on you. It was great to see God's amazing creations."

Just outside New York City, in West Orange, New Jersey, two dazzling fireballs marked the highlight of the Perseid meteor shower, as seen by this reporter.

NASA held an online skywatching party for the Perseids, providing a live camera view where meteors streaked across the frame of an all-sky camera at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. NASA astronomer Bill Cooke and his fellow meteor scientists Danielle Moser and Rhiannon Blaauw hosted a webchat for the Perseids to answer questions from what seemed to be a throng of eager skywatchers online.

In addition to the Perseids and the nearly full moon of August, and is known as the Full Sturgeon moon among other names, the International Space Station also made an appearance in the Friday night sky.

Cooke snapped an eye-catching photo of the space station streaking over Huntsville using one of the Perseid all-sky cameras and posted it on Twitter, where he posts updates as @MeteorScientist.

"ISS pass over Huntsville at 9 tonight," Cooke wrote. The space station is making a series of passes over the United States this week. Here are some tips to spot the space station in the night sky.

Some of the best views of the Perseid meteor shower actually occurred earlier this week, when the moon was not at its brightest and therefore didn't wash out the shooting star display.

Photographer and amateur astronomer Nick Rose managed to catch a view of the Perseids on Aug 10 from Millbrae, Calif., just outside San Francisco.  [See Nick Rose's Perseid meteor photo here]

"With around 90 or so photos I took this morning only one of them had a Perseid meteor," Rose told SPACE.com in an email. "Even though Perseus is in the direction of the San Francisco International airport with a lot of [light pollution] I was still able to get a pretty good photo."

Back in New York City, skywatcher Peter Orrick was amazed at what he saw on Aug. 10.  

"I was in Central Park and noticed a bright streak across the sky crossing from east to west then it split into two streaks!" Orrick told SPACE.com in an Aug. 10 email. "I'd never seen a meteor that bright!"

Editor's note: If you snapped an amazing photo of a Perseid meteor this year and would like to share it with SPACE.com for our Perseids 2011 gallery, please send them to managing editor Tariq Malik at: meteor showers of 2011 here.

You can follow SPACE.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Perseid Meteor Shower Light Show Peaks Tonight (SPACE.com)

In a double weekend treat, one of the most well-known and reliable meteor showers — the Perseid meteor shower — will reach its peak overnight Friday (Aug. 12) as the International Space Station flies across the sky above many U.S. cities.

The annual Perseid meteor shower returns this week, but is expected to hit its peak activity in the overnight hours of Friday and Saturday (Aug. 13). While the full moon of August may interfere with the meteor display, the best time to catch the pretty light show (weather permitting) is during the predawn hours, especially on Saturday morning, experts at NASA advise. 

And if you're looking skyward before dawn this week, you might also be able to glimpse the space station overhead. [Photos: Amazing Perseid Meteor Shower Displays]

The International Space Station will be making a series of early morning flybys over the U.S. throughout this week and into the weekend, NASA officials said. The massive orbiting complex shines bright enough that its visibility in the sky is not drowned out by moonlight or city lights.

NASA's space station tracker lists local flyby times, including those for several major cities such as Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York, that are expected to have good viewing opportunities on Friday and Saturday.

NASA is inviting the public to participate in a Perseids webchat and "all-night" meteor shower viewing party, hosted by astronomer Bill Cooke and his team from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The webchat will begin at 11:00 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT) on Friday (Aug. 12) and will last until 5:00 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT) on Saturday (Aug. 13).

The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year as Earth passes through a stream of dust particles and debris from the Comet Swift-Tuttle. As these specks of comet dust hit the top of Earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to 140,000 miles per hour (225,000 kilometers per hour), they are heated and form bright meteor streaks that can be seen across the sky.

These meteors stream out of the constellation of Perseus, which is how the meteor shower got the name "Perseids." [Top 10 Perseid Meteor Shower Facts]

Skywatchers around the world are currently counting more than a dozen Perseids each hour, according to NASA and the International Meteor Organization. The light show should reach its peak between Aug. 12 and 13, as Earth orbits near the heart of the comet debris stream.

This year, however, the full moon occurs one hour after the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, which could outshine some of the fainter Perseids that would normally be visible against a darker sky, according to NASA. But before dawn, the full moon will be relatively low and the meteor count should be high at that time. [Video: Perseid Meteor Shower 2011 Guide]

The meteor shower will likely be viewed best under dark country skies, which will help eliminate light pollution.

Gaherty also reminds meteor watchers to have patience, as the streaks usually come in bunches, with wait times in between. He recommends budgeting at least an hour or two of skywatching to catch a good glimpse of this year's shower. 

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of a Perseid meteor this year and would like to share it with SPACE.com for a possible story or gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at: tmalik@space.com.

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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