The Perseid meteor shower will peak Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, with up to 100 streaks visible every hour.<\/p>\n
The Perseid shower, which has been active since July 17, is \u201cconsidered the best meteor shower of the year,\u201d according to NASA<\/a>. Experts note that the moon may impact some visibility, but viewers will still be able to watch the shower if they\u2019re in a dark area away from city lights and their phones.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what to know to prepare for the year\u2019s biggest meteor shower.<\/p>\n What is a meteor shower?<\/p>\n Meteoroids are falling pieces of debris from comets and asteroids that, as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, turn into meteors, according to NASA<\/a>. As meteors vaporize, their trails are visible from Earth, which is what we call \u201cshooting stars\u201d or \u201cfalling stars.\u201d<\/p>\n A meteor shower is what happens when there\u2019s a higher-than-usual number of meteors falling across the sky in a short period of time. Meteor showers happen at certain times throughout the year because comets also orbit the sun, so when a comet and the Earth cross paths<\/a>, the Earth encounters a lot of the comet\u2019s debris, or meteoroids.<\/p>\n What to know about the Perseid meteor shower<\/strong><\/p>\n Perseid meteors leave particularly long, bright trails as they fall through Earth\u2019s atmosphere, with about 50 to 100 streaks expected to be visible every hour at its peak.<\/p>\n The Perseid shower comes from comet 109\/Swift-Tuttle<\/a>, a comet that takes 133 years to orbit the sun and crosses the Earth\u2019s orbit once a year. The shower\u2019s name comes from the constellation Perseus, NASA explains,<\/a> which is the point in the sky from which the Perseid meteors are visibly falling.<\/p>\n Fireballs are also anticipated to appear throughout Tuesday night into Wednesday. \u201cFireballs<\/a>\u201d is an astronomical term used by NASA to describe meteoroids that burst into bright colors while in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, becoming more visible than average meteors.<\/p>\n How to watch the Perseid meteor shower<\/p>\n Northern Hemisphere residents will have the best Perseid views, NASA reports. But this year\u2019s shower does coincide with the rise of a waning gibbous moon<\/a>, the phase between a full moon and a half moon, which could impact visibility, Space.com warned.<\/a><\/p>\n “You\u2019re probably going to see 10 to 20 [Perseids] per hour or fewer, and that\u2019s because we have a bright moon in the sky washing out the fainter meteors,” Bill Cooke, the lead for NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, explained<\/a>.<\/a> For the clearest view, Cooke recommends, “Look anywhere but at the moon.”<\/p>\n