Sign up for our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to our free IndyTech newsletter. Subscribe to our free IndyTech newsletter. The spectacular Perseid summer light show is back, and it might be better than ever. The stunning meteor shower will peak Wednesday night into Thursday morning and coincides with a total solar eclipse in some parts of Europe, although the best time to see the fireballs will come after totality. Between 50 and 100 meteors per hour can be seen under ideal conditions. conditions, according to NASA. The American Meteor Society estimates that between 30 and 50 meteors per hour could be seen from rural regions. Random meteors are visible in dark skies on a given night. Meteor showers tend to offer dazzling celestial spectacles and occur at predictable times each year as Earth passes through debris trails left by comets and sometimes asteroids. Those debris collide with Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds, producing rays of light known as shooting stars. The Perseids are remnants of Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, an icy ball that orbits the Sun every 133 years and is not scheduled to return until 2125. Observations of this meteor shower date back more than 2,000 years. The Perseids are a perennial favorite because they tend to produce bright stars. fireballs Summer temperatures also make this rain popular. A composite image made from 726 photographs taken over three hours from midnight showing the Earth’s rotation around Polaris, the North Star, in the night sky over Ashton Windmill, Somerset (Ben Birchall/PA) (PA Archive) “We don’t have to suffer through a cold winter night to get a good view of meteors,” said astronomer Zach Vanderbosch of the McDonald Observatory in Texas. The peak of the Perseids, which further improves observation conditions. “The Moon is beautiful, but it’s a diva,” said astronomer Aparna Venkatesan of the University of San Francisco. “A new moon means we don’t have moonlight flooding the sky, and as a result you tend to see a lot more meteors.” How to Watch the Perseid Meteor Shower To spot the meteors, go outside after dark, away from clouds and city lights. The best views will be between midnight and dawn, when the constellation Perseus is high in the northern sky. The meteors will appear to radiate from that constellation. Look up and give your eyes half an hour to adjust to the darkness. Vanderbosch recommends choosing a patch of sky to focus on until a fast, bright streak passes, even in your peripheral vision, and avoiding looking at your phone. “There’s something magical about this,” Vanderbosch said. Where can I watch the solar eclipse in the UK and Ireland? Although the exact times of the August 12 solar eclipse will vary and weather conditions may cloud visibility, in general you will be able to see more coverage the further south-west you are, Royal Museums Greenwich said. First contact must be visible from 6:08 pm in Scotland until 6:18 pm in Truro, Cornwall. Between 7:05pm and 7:15pm, UK destinations will see the eclipse reach its maximum, and at 8:10pm the moon will no longer cover the sun in all areas. For those who plan to watch the solar show, eclipse glasses are crucial.
