Beautiful Meteor Shower Will Fill Sky This Week With Up To A Hundred Shooting Stars An Hour

Aug 10, 2020

The annual Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak this week on the night of August 11 to August 12 producing up to a hundred meteors an hour.

The Perseid meteor shower is one the most popular meteor showers of the year. This year, it runs from July 17 to August 26, reaching its peak a few days from today, between August 11 to August 12.

According to NASA, one is most likely to see the greatest number of meteors in the pre-dawn hours on August 12.

The annual Perseid meteor shower occurs every August, due to our Earth passing through a stream of dust from the Comet Swift-Tuttle.

According to Space.com, the “Comet Swift-Tuttle is the largest object known to repeatedly pass by Earth; its nucleus is about 16 miles (26 kilometers) wide. It last passed nearby Earth during its orbit around the sun in 1992, and the next time will be in 2126. But it won't be forgotten in the meantime, because Earth passes through the dust and debris it leaves behind every year, creating the annual Perseid meteor shower.”

As all meteor showers are named after the constellation that their meteors seem to originate from, the Perseid meteor shower is named after the Northern Hemisphere constellation Perseus, according to Space.com.

It’s meteors, the majority of them about the size of a grain of sand, hit the atmosphere at approximately 36 miles per second which causes them to burn up and generate a shooting stream of light, according to Scientific American.

In order to see the greatest number of meteors, the Royal Museums Greenwich shared some helpful tips: 

“Reduce the amount of light pollution in your field of view. This could mean heading out to the countryside, a nearby park or even do something as simple as turning your back to street lamps if you are not able to go anywhere. Give your eyes at least 15 minutes to adjust to the dark so that you can catch more of the fainter meteors – this does mean that you should not look at your phone!”

Are you going to watch the Perseid meteor shower this year? Let us know in the comments and be sure to pass this article along to your friends and family so they won’t miss out on this meteor shower!