The shower peaks around August 12-13, with the best viewing generally coming after midnight and toward dawn on Thursday, August 13. NASA lists August 12-13 as the peak night and says the Perseids can produce dozens of meteors per hour under favorable dark-sky conditions. The Perseid meteor shower is reaching its annual peak, giving sky watchers across the United States a chance to see bright meteors streak across the night sky.
The central development
The Perseids are produced by debris from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, KSAT reported. This year’s display has an added advantage: the peak arrives around the new Moon , meaning there is little moonlight to wash out fainter meteors. As Earth travels through the stream of particles left behind by the comet, tiny pieces of material enter the atmosphere at extremely high speeds and burn up, creating the flashes commonly called shooting stars.
The American Meteor Society lists the Perseids as active from July 17 through August 24, with the peak falling on August 12-13 and the Moon at essentially 0% illumination. NASA puts the Perseid meteor velocity at about 59 kilometers per second.
NASA says the Perseids are among the year’s most prominent meteor showers and are known for bright meteors and occasional fireballs.
