The Perseids meteor shower will pass by this weekend and won’t be affected by bad weather this year. Setting an alarm is not necessarily necessary, because shooting stars will likely be seen throughout the night.
The Perseid Swarm can be seen on August 13th each year. Earth then passes through the debris cloud of Comet Swift-Tuttle.
Last year, the weather threw a spanner in the works, but that’s not the case now. After a cloudy start to the weekend, it will appear overnight from Saturday to Sunday, Weerplaza predicts. And that’s a good thing, because that night is the climax of the star shower.
You’ll see most shooting stars around 4:00 AM: about sixty per hour. But you don’t necessarily have to set an alarm, because you’ll likely see shooting stars all night long. “You can only see them when it’s dark. That’s from about 11:30 p.m. until an hour and a half before sunrise, around 4:30,” says Raymond Claassen of Weerplaza.
The swarm can be seen with the naked eye. You can see shooting stars best by standing in a dark place. If you look to the northeast, the light show should be clearly visible.
