The best meteor shower of the year reaches its peak Wednesday night into early Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
And this year, we have a big advantage: the peak coincides with a new moon, so there\u2019s no bright moonlight to wash out the meteors. That means viewing conditions should be ideal.<\/p>\n
From the suburbs, you could see around a dozen meteors per hour. In the brighter, more light-polluted skies of the city, you may see about half that. But if you can get to a darker, rural location, you could see two dozen or more meteors per hour.<\/p>\n
You may start spotting a few as early as 10 p.m., but the later you stay up, the better the show gets.<\/p>\n
The best viewing will be between 2 and 4 a.m. For the best chance of seeing meteors, find the darkest part of the sky, get away from city lights, and look up!<\/p>\n
Courtesy: Sky & TelescopeHow the Perseids got their name:<\/p>\n
The Perseid meteor shower gets its name from the constellation Perseus.<\/p>\n
If you trace the streaks of light across the sky, they appear to come from a point near this constellation. Astronomers call that point the \u201cradiant.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Perseids have been observed for centuries. Records date back to 36 A.D. in China. In 1836, Belgian-French astronomer Adolphe Quetelet recognized that the meteor shower returns every August and gave it the name Perseids.<\/p>\n
In 1862, American astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle independently discovered that the meteors are tiny pieces of debris left behind by a comet.<\/p>\n
That comet is now known as Swift-Tuttle, and it\u2019s a big one, about 16 miles across, making it one of the largest known periodic comets. No other meteor shower matches the number of the Perseids. <\/p>\n
According to NASA the Perseids have the most visible meteorsWhat meteors look like:<\/p>\n
It is inaccurate to call them shooting stars because they are pieces of rubble similar in shape, size, color, and texture to Grape Nuts cereal. This cereal is still on store shelves. <\/p>\n
They are similar in size, color and texture to Grape Nuts cereal (Anthony Yanez)What you are actually seeing in the sky:<\/p>\n
Perseid meteors race through space at about 37 miles per second, that\u2019s roughly 133,000 miles per hour!<\/p>\n
When one of these tiny particles hits our atmosphere, about 60 miles above Earth, it compresses the air in front of it, much like water piling up in front of a speeding boat.<\/p>\n
That creates an incredibly hot shock wave, and that\u2019s what produces the bright streak of light we see across the sky.<\/p>\n
So, you\u2019re not actually seeing the tiny piece of comet burn up. You\u2019re seeing the glowing air around it as it races through the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
None of the tiny pieces that create the Perseids never make it to the ground.<\/p>\n
I put together a video explaining why the Perseids, and other meteor showers, return every year. Just keep in mind, that video was made three years ago, under a different moon phase.<\/p>\n