The Perseid meteor shower is almost upon us, and this year especially, you don’t want to miss it.
The annual August meteor shower is one of the most prolific natural light shows of the year with up to 100 shooting stars streaking across the sky per hour at its peak.
This year the meteor watching should be especially good because the shower peaks between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, coinciding with the new moon.
With no moon in the sky, even the dimmest meteors will be visible if you can get yourself far away from man-made light pollution.
The last time the Perseids peaked at the same time as the new moon was in 2007.
The Perseids come to us courtesy of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which makes a complete orbit around the sun once every 133 years. As the comet flies through space it sheds bits of material from its nucleus. Over time, its orbit has turned into a ring of dusty debris.
Each August the Earth’s orbit takes it through a small section of this ring, causing stray bits of comet dust to slam into our atmosphere at 37 miles per second.
