Perseids Meteor Shower

Unlike 2021, 2022 is not as good a year for the Perseids. 🙁 The full moon will be up all night long, illuminating your sky. Although the predicted peak falls during the night of August 11-12, it has a long range: from July 14 to September 1. So, you can start watching for these meteors in early August morning hours, when the moon is waxing and will set before the night is over. You can also look after the peak in August, after sunset, as the moon rises later and later each night. The Perseid meteor shower is perhaps the most beloved meteor shower of the year for the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a rich meteor shower, and it’s steady. These swift and bright meteors radiate from a point in the constellation Perseus the Hero. As with all meteor shower radiant points, you don’t need to know Perseus to watch the shower. Instead, the meteors appear in all parts of the sky. These meteors frequently leave persistent trains. Perseid meteors tend to strengthen in number as late night deepens into midnight. The shower typically produces the most meteors in the wee hours before dawn

For a while there, astronomers calculated that the Swift-Tuttle would collide with the Earth during the Perseids in 2126. Such an impact would have spoiled any stargazing since the comet is the largest near-Earth object that periodically goes through our sky. If Swift-Tuttle ever does hit the Earth, its 60 km/s impact will be about 27 times more energetic than the astroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs.

The Perseids are famous for producing a large number of bright meteors. The shower runs annually from July 14 to August 24.