The annual Perseid meteor shower will peak overnight on Monday, Aug. 12, through Tuesday, Aug. 13, with an uptick in “shooting stars” expected despite the presence of a waning full moon. The result of a comet twice the size of the object thought to have killed the dinosaurs and one of the annual highlights of the stargazing calendar, it usually produces up to 75 “shooting stars” per hour, but rates will be down this year.
The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks on Monday, Aug. 12, through Tuesday, Aug. 13, but is unlikely to deliver the 75 ‘shooting stars’ per hour that would normally be visible because of an 84%-lit waning gibbous moon.
According to EarthSky, the peak of the Perseids is predicted for 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. EDT) on Aug. 12, which makes the very early mornings of Aug. 11, 12 and 13 likely to be when there are the most meteors.
With bright moonlight all night on those dates, it’s also worth looking after these dates, particularly on Aug. 15, when the moon will have decreased in brightness and will rise around midnight.
Although “shooting stars” can be seen anywhere in the night sky, the radiant point of Perseids is the constellation Perseus, which rises in the northeast as it gets dark during August in the Northern Hemisphere.
The best chance may be just after sunset and before moonrise, when the sky is still dark, on Aug. 12. It’s a narrow window. “Some Perseids will be visible shortly before/during moonrise on the evening of Aug. 12, when the sky should still be dark,” said Dr. Qicheng Zhang, astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, in an email. “The overall rate of meteors will be lower at this time than in the early morning hours, but the rate of visible meteors might be comparable or even a bit higher than due to much fainter meteors being visible without the moon.”
The strong moonlight will make the Perseids less impressive this year, but there are ways to maximize your chances. “Watching from the shadow of, say, a house, tree, or mountain could be done to block direct moonlight when the moon is up and make viewing a bit more pleasant,” said Zhang.
It’s all because of 109P/Swift-Tuttle, a huge comet that takes 133 years to orbit the sun. Last in the solar system in 1992, its nucleus is 16 miles (26 kilometers) across, which is over twice the size of the comet or asteroid that is thought to have killed the dinosaurs, according to NASA.