The Perseids Are Here!
And it is a new moon:
SPACE.com -- Shooting Stars! Viewer's Guide to the Perseid Meteor Shower: Though they vary, the Perseids are more predictable than most meteor showers. And while never grand on the scale of historic meteor storms caused by the November Leonid meteor shower, the Perseids are dependable. "From every northern location in the world, a fair number of nice meteors will be seen," says Rainer Arlt, an astronomer at Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam in Germany. "The only hindrance is artificial light." The Perseids regularly produce 50 to 150 meteors per hour -- more than 1 per minute -- under dark skies. There have been years when they produced only a handful, and other years when the count soared above 200 per hour. The first records of the shower date back to 36 A.D., with a Chinese account of "more than 100 meteors" being sighted one early morning. This year's peak hourly rate is expected to be on the low end of the range, likely around 50...
