{"id":54996,"date":"2025-08-08T17:21:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T17:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/54996\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T17:21:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T17:21:23","slug":"perseid-meteor-shower-2025-how-to-see-shooting-stars-despite-the-full-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/54996\/","title":{"rendered":"Perseid meteor shower 2025: How to see ‘shooting stars’ despite the full moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Perseids<\/a> \u2014 one of the strongest meteor showers of the year in the Northern Hemisphere \u2014 will peak on the night of Aug. 12-13. This meteor shower typically brings up to 75 “shooting stars” per hour, but this year, there’s a big problem: a nearly full moon.<\/p>\n

Meteor showers are always best seen in dark, moonless skies. However, August’s full Sturgeon Moon<\/a> rises on Saturday, Aug. 9. The moon always rises later each day as it orbits Earth, but in the summer, there’s less of a difference. By Tuesday, Aug. 12, it will rise at almost the same time as it begins to get dark, making the window for a moonless night sky extremely short.<\/p>\n

For example, on Aug. 9 in New York, the sun will set at 8:27 p.m. EDT, and an 84%-illuminated waning gibbous moon will rise at about 10:01 p.m. EDT and will remain in the sky for the rest of the night, according to Time and Date<\/a>. Astronomical twilight \u2014 when “shooting stars” may become visible \u2014 doesn’t begin until 10:28 p.m. EDT. With the Perseids peaking around midnight, there is no ideal time on the peak night when the night sky will be properly dark.<\/p>\n

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But all is not lost. The peak on Aug. 12-13 is particularly strong, according to the American Meteor Society<\/a>, so even though you won’t spot anything like the 50 to 75 meteors per hour sometimes seen in dark rural skies, shooting stars should still be visible in a clear sky. The peak night is still likely to be the best time to look.<\/p>\n

It also helps that the moon will trace a low arc across the southern sky \u2014 as it does in summer when it’s close to its full phase \u2014 but your expectations should be conservative. Just a handful of bright “shooting stars” are likely to be seen by most observers.<\/p>\n

The best advice is to watch with your back to the moon. That will serve a dual purpose because the moon will be in the south, while the radiant point of the Perseids (located in the constellation Perseus) will be rising in the northeast.<\/p>\n

With each passing night after the peak, the moon rises later, widening the window for a moonless sky after sunset. However, with the rates dipping considerably after the peak night, there is no ideal time to watch the Perseid meteor shower this year.<\/p>\n

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The Perseid meteor shower is the result of dust and debris left in the inner solar system<\/a> by a colossal comet called Swift-Tuttle. About 16 miles (26 kilometers) in diameter, it was last in the inner solar system in 1992 and won’t be seen again until 2125, according to NASA<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Perseids \u2014 one of the strongest meteor showers of the year in the Northern Hemisphere \u2014 will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-54996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}