A \u201cprolific\u201d meteor shower will dash across Toronto\u2019s skies next week, but the moonlight could outshine how visible they will be to stargazers. <\/p>\n
The Perseids meteor shower<\/a> occurs every summer in the northern hemisphere from late July to mid-August. This year they peak on the evening of Aug. 12 to Aug. 13. <\/p>\n Walter Stoddard, senior scientist at the Ontario Science Centre, tells CTV News Toronto that this celestial event is often a favourite since the Perseids can produce some \u201cspectacular\u201d meteors and even some fireballs, which are larger streaks through the air.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is one of the most prolific ones in terms of number of meteors per hour and it also tends to produce a few fireballs,\u201d Ethen Sun, astronomer at the department of David A. Dunlop Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, told CTV News Toronto.<\/p>\n The Perseids are debris left behind from Comet 109\/Swift-Tuttle\u2014named after Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle who discovered the comet in 1862. The comet has an orbit of 133 years and passed through the inner solar system in 1992.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got an upgrade, if you will. We got additional debris added in that path in 1992 and so we ended up with a peak in the meteor shower,\u201d Stoddard explained. \u201cEvery year since then has still been a good year.\u201d<\/p>\n The reason why they are called the Perseids is because of their radiance and their proximity to the constellation Perseus when they are at their most active. <\/p>\n According to NASA<\/a>, the Perseids shower between 50 and 100 meteors per hour\u2014though both Stoddard and Sun say the moonlight this year will reduce the Perseids\u2019 visibility. <\/p>\n Moonlight to eclipse Perseids visibility<\/p>\n Even though August\u2019s full moon, dubbed the sturgeon moon, will be the most visible from Friday night to early Saturday morning, Sun says its beams will block some of the meteors from sight. <\/p>\n \u201cThe main thing is that the moonlight gets scattered in the atmosphere, makes the sky a little blue, and you can\u2019t see the faint meteors. The other factor is that when the moon is up in the sky, it\u2019s hard for your eyes to fully adjust,\u201d Sun said. <\/p>\n