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The Perseid meteor shower is one of the best shooting star displays of the year and it's currently active. The Perseid meteor shower (also known as the Perseids) is active every year from mid-July to late August. This year the shower will peak around the night of Aug. 12 and before dawn on Aug.13, 2023, according to the science site Royal Museums Greenwich. 2023 will be a good year for the Perseids as the moon will only be 10% illuminated. The Perseids are caused by Earth passing through debris — bits of ice and rock — left behind by Comet...

Explanation: Does the Earth ever pass through a wind of meteors? Yes, and they are frequently visible as meteor showers. Almost all meteors are sand-sized debris that escaped from a Sun-orbiting comet or asteroid, debris that continues in an elongated orbit around the Sun. Circling the same Sun, our Earth can move through an orbiting debris stream, where it can appear, over time, as a meteor wind. The meteors that light up in Earth's atmosphere, however, are usually destroyed. Their streaks, though, can all be traced back to a single point on the sky called the radiant. The featured image...

For thousands of years, the most consistent, spectacular meteor shower has been the Perseids, created by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. At its incredibly large size (26 kilometers across) and speed, it contains nearly 30 times the energy of the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs... If Jupiter — which it also passes by — gives it just the slightest gravitational kick, it could be flung into the Sun, ejected from the Solar System, or hurtled directly into our world. If this were to happen, and it's a real possibility some 2400 years from now, it would mark the largest mass extinction...

Explanation: This year an outburst of Perseid meteors surprised skywatchers. The reliable meteor shower's peak was predicted for the night of August 12/13. But persistent visual observers in North America were deluged with a startling Perseid shower outburst a day later, with reports of multiple meteors per minute and sometimes per second in the early hours of August 14. The shower radiant is high in a dark night sky in this composite image. It painstakingly registers the trails of 282 Perseids captured during the stunning outburst activity between 0650 UT (02:50am EDT) and 0900 UT (05:00am EDT) on August 14...

Explanation: Comet dust rained down on planet Earth last week, streaking through dark skies in the annual Perseid meteor shower. The featured picture is a composite of many images taken from the same location over the peak night of the Perseids. The umbrella was not needed as a shield from meteors, since they almost entirely evaporate high in the Earth's atmosphere. Many of the component images featured individual Perseids, while one image featured the foreground near Jiuquan City, Gansu Province, China. The stellar background includes the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, appearing nearly vertical, as well as the...

Explanation: What's the best way to watch a meteor shower? This question might come up later this week when the annual Perseid Meteor Shower peaks. One thing that is helpful is a dark sky, as demonstrated in the featured composite image of last year's Perseids. Many more faint meteors are visible on the left image, taken through a very dark sky in Slovakia, than on the right image, taken through a moderately dark sky in the Czech Republic. The band of the Milky Way Galaxy bridges the two coordinated images, while the meteor shower radiant in the constellation of Perseus...

LIVE FEED of current Perseid Meteor Shower.

Explanation: Why would meteor trails appear curved? The arcing effect arises only because the image artificially compresses (nearly) the whole sky into a rectangle. The meteors are from the Perseid Meteor Shower that peaked last week. The featured multi-frame image combines not only different directions from the 360 projection, but different times when bright Perseid meteors momentarily streaked across the sky. All Perseid meteors can be traced back to the constellation Perseus toward the lower left, even the seemingly curved (but really straight) meteor trails. Although Perseids always point back to their Perseus radiant, they can appear almost anywhere on...

very August stargazers in the Northern hemisphere eagerly await the Perseid meteor shower. The annual celestial light show is caused by cosmic dust and debris left in Earth’s orbital path by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. The comet last entered our solar system in 1992, and won’t be back until 2126, but we still get treated to its glowing remnants of its tail every year. More than 4.5 billion years ago, comets formed out of the same gas and dust that created Earth and the other planets in our solar system. But unlike planets that orbit the sun on more circular orbits, comets...

A meteor lit up the night sky over Tennessee and neighboring states late Sunday (June 7), sparking 120 fireball sightings across 12 different states and Canada. The fireball occurred at 9:42 p.m. EDT (0142 GMT) and blazed a trail over southern Ohio, according to a ground track by the American Meteor Society. It was visible for up to 3.5 seconds from as far south as South Carolina and as far north as Ontario, Canada, AMS reported. One witness video shows the fireball from Knoxville, Tennessee, as the meteor flares up in a dazzling streak and disappear seconds later. The video,...

More than 200 people across Missouri and seven other states spotted a fireball meteor last night light as it lit up the Midwestern sky, KMOV reports. The American Meteor Society posted observer accounts and several videos of the sighting to its website Tuesday. "It was super bright..." said Lisa B. in Ellisville, Missouri, who filed a report with the group. "We said, what IS that?!? Omg it's a fireball, I have to get my camera. Then tried to open my camera and the trail was all that was left." Some observers said the meteor appeared to break up into several...

The peak of the summer's best meteor shower – the Perseids– peaks overnight tonight (Aug. 12), but you'll need good weather to see it. Just in case your night sky cloudy or hazy, you can check out the annual meteor shower on webcasts online by Slooh, NASA and the Virtual Telescope Project. You can watch the Perseid meteor shower webcast here, courtesy of the astronomy broadcast service Slooh. The 6-hour webcast begins at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) and you can watch it directly on Slooh.com. During the broadcast, viewers can use the hashtag #Slooh on social media to share...

Every object in our Solar System that takes the plunge from out beyond Neptune to our inner reaches, where the rocky planets lie, will become a comet. As it nears the Sun, its ices melt, creating the tails we associate with them, and also creating a debris path that can create meteor showers if they cross Earth's orbit. For thousands of years, the most consistent, spectacular meteor shower has been the Perseids, created by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. At its incredibly large size (26 kilometers across) and speed, it contains nearly 30 times the energy of the asteroid strike that wiped out...

Meteor showers are associated with streams of debris left behind by comets. The Perseids are dust bits from Comet Swift-Tuttle and are famous for creating bright fireballs and elevated meteor activity for nearly two weeks in mid-August. This year it is predicted the shower will peak on the overnight of Thursday, Aug. 11, to Friday, Aug. 12. It is predicted to be twice the usual intensity. That’s because Earth will pass through the center of the debris stream rather than the grazing encounter we experience in most years. The display should be well worth the loss of a few hours’...

Explanation: Dusty debris from periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle was swept up by planet Earth this week. Vaporized by their passage through the dense atmosphere at 59 kilometers per second, the tiny grains produced a stream of Perseid meteors. A bright, colorful Perseid meteor flash was captured during this 20 second exposure. It made its ephemeral appearance after midnight on August 12, in the moonless skies over the broad granite dome of Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, central Texas, USA. Below the Perseid meteor, trees stand in silhouette against scattered lights along the horizon and the faint Milky Way, itself cut by...

Explanation: Have you watched the Perseid meteor shower? Though the annual shower's predicted peak was last night, meteor activity should continue tonight (August 13/14), best enjoyed by just looking up in clear, dark skies after midnight. Of course, this year's Perseid shower has the advantage of being active near the August 14 New Moon. Since the nearly New Moon doesn't rise before the morning twilight many fainter meteors are easier to spot until then, with no interference from bright moonlight. The Perseid meteor shower last occurred near a New Moon in 2013. That's when the exposures used to construct this...

Explanation: Tonight the Perseid Meteor Shower reaches its maximum. Grains of icy rock will streak across the sky as they evaporate during entry into Earth's atmosphere. These grains were shed from Comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids result from the annual crossing of the Earth through Comet Swift-Tuttle's orbit, and are typically the most active meteor shower of the year. Although it is hard to predict the level of activity in any meteor shower, in a clear dark sky an observer might see a meteor a minute. This year's Perseids occur just before a new Moon and so the relatively dark sky...

Many skywatchers love August because the ever-reliable Perseid meteor shower peaks mid-month, but unfortunately, this year's usually brilliant meteor display may be spoiled by a bright full moon. Link 1The Perseid shower is expected to reach its peak at 8 p.m. EDT on August 12. The bright moon will rise the around 9:30 p.m. eastern time on Aug. 12 and 13, and shine brightly the rest of the night. To make matters worse, the full moon rising Sunday (Aug. 10) will be brighter than it usually is because this full moon, called a "supermoon," will be the closest of 2014....

Explanation: Denizens of planet Earth typically watch meteor showers by looking up. But this remarkable view, captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by looking down. From Garan's perspective onboard the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of about 380 kilometers, the Perseid meteors streak below, swept up dust left from comet Swift-Tuttle heated to incandescence. The glowing comet dust grains are traveling at about 60 kilometers per second through the denser atmosphere around 100 kilometers above Earth's surface. In this case, the foreshortened meteor flash is right of frame center, below the...

Many skywatchers love August because the ever-reliable Perseid meteor shower peaks mid-month, but unfortunately, this year's usually brilliant meteor display may be spoiled by a bright full moon. The Perseid shower is expected to reach its peak at 8 p.m. EDT on August 12. The bright moon will rise the around 9:30 p.m. eastern time on Aug. 12 and 13, and shine brightly the rest of the night. To make matters worse, the full moon rising Sunday (Aug. 10) will be brighter than it usually is because this full moon, called a "supermoon," will be the closest of 2014