A meteor shower should be visible in Pennsylvania this weekend, experts say.<\/p>\n
The Perseids, which NASA <\/a>deemed the most popular meteor shower, will peak Wednesday night and Thursday in the Pittsburgh region.<\/p>\n The shower lasts until Saturday, coinciding with a solar eclipse and a new moon.<\/p>\n Meteor showers are remnants from comets. The Perseids occur annually in August, said Allegheny Observatory outreach coordinator Karry Handron.<\/p>\n To understand why the Perseids happen each year, Handron said to picture the Earth\u2019s orbit around the sun, then imagine a gravel trail along that orbit that has been left behind by a comet.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery August, the Earth orbits through that gravel trail, and we get the Perseids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The Perseids are expected to leave long streaks of light and color in their wake as they streak through the night sky, according to NASA.<\/p>\n The shower is one of Earth\u2019s most abundant \u2014 with 50 to 100 meteors visible every hour.<\/p>\n Handron said the size of the meteors is almost equivalent to a grain of sand.<\/p>\n The meteor shower may be difficult to see, especially within city limits where light pollution obscures visibility.<\/p>\n At the same time, a partial solar eclipse Wednesday afternoon was only 1% visible from Pittsburgh. Handron said it could barely be seen because of the gray skies that have covered the city for much of the week.<\/p>\n \u201cThe place to go for that would have been Europe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The total solar <\/a>eclipse<\/a> is currently visible in Spain, Iceland and Greenland. It can be viewed on NASA\u2019s website.<\/p>\n To see the meteor shower, Handron recommended viewing from darker sites outside of Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n