The heavens are putting on a great show tonight and early tomorrow morning: the Perseid Meteor Shower is coming.
The Perseids are bits of debris left by comet Swift-Tuttle.The debris is like a river of small particles in space, and each year, Earth passes through it. As the bits zoom through our atmosphere at 37 miles per second (60 kps) they vaporize, creating the brilliant streaks of light. Most of the meteors are no larger than a grain of sand.
The shower is typically best between midnight and dawn, when the side of Earth you are standing on is plowing into the stream as our planet plunges through space in its orbit around the sun. It's similar to how bugs hit the windshield of a moving car but rarely smack into the rear bumper.
The annual shower begins as a trickle in mid-July and will continue to spark a handful of shooting stars for several nights to come. But Earth passes through the densest part of the stream Aug. 12 at around 7 a.m. ET (1100 GMT). The moon will set around 1:30 a.m. local time (regardless of your location), leaving the sky dark for a few hours of optimal meteor watching across much of North America.
"There should be plenty of meteors -- perhaps one or two every minute," said Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Cooke said the brightest Perseids can be seen from a city, but the majority are too faint and are visible only from rural locations.
The best viewing locations are in rural areas, away from the city lights. So, if you don't have to be at work early tomorrow morning, it's a great night for meteor shower viewing.
