{"id":734201,"date":"2026-08-11T04:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T04:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734201\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T04:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T04:52:08","slug":"perseid-meteor-shower-reaches-peak-when-and-where-to-catch-a-glimpse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734201\/","title":{"rendered":"Perseid meteor shower reaches peak: When and where to catch a glimpse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Meteor showers happen when the Earth passes through trails of debris from asteroids or comets &#8211; a snowball of frozen rock and gas orbiting the Sun. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As that debris enters our planet&#8217;s atmosphere, it burns up and creates spectacular streaks of light &#8211; meteors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Royal Astronomical Society Research Fellow Dr Becky Smethurst described the Perseids as &#8220;one of the best nights for astronomy all year&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Perseids, pronounced &#8216;Per-see-ids&#8217;, are caused by debris left behind specifically by the Swift-Tuttle comet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This comet is considered large with its solid core measuring16 miles (26km) across.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As it takes 133 years to complete a single orbit around the Sun &#8211; much longer than our own &#8211; some of the pieces of rock we see burning up could have been left behind more than a century ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s sort of like the Universe&#8217;s own cosmic clock in a way,&#8221; Smethurst said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">These meteors are visible all around the world and named because they appear to originate from the constellation Perseus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meteor showers happen when the Earth passes through trails of debris from asteroids or comets &#8211; a snowball&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-734201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}