How to see the Perseid meteor shower this week

If the sky is clear of clouds tonight, it may be worth venturing outside to watch out for what promises to be the year’s best meteor shower. Here’s a quick guide on how to make the most of it.
The Perseid meteor shower is at its peak and as countless fragments of cosmic dust crash into the Earth’s atmosphere, the sky will be streaked with faint trails of light — shooting stars.
The display was expected to be most active on Monday night, with about 60 to 100 meteors per hour until dawn — but the following couple of evenings could also give a good show.
The best place to see the meteors is in pitch-black darkness, well away from any artificial lights. Several National Parks — including the South Downs, the Yorkshire Dales and the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) — have been designated as international dark sky reserves, making them ideal viewing spots.
Failing that, get as far away from street lights and other illumination as you can, give your eyes a good 15 minutes to adjust to the darkness — and don’t look at your mobile phone. Try lying on the grass or on a sunlounger and gazing towards the heavens. Peripheral vision is more sensitive in low-light conditions, so it might be worth looking for the meteor trails out of the corner of your eye.
The best chance to see a meteor begins just after midnight and ends about an hour before sunrise, but will depend on the weather where you are. The meteors can appear in any section of sky, but it may be worth using a stargazing app to find the Perseus constellation, which will rise in the northeast, and peer in that direction.
Helpfully, there will be little interference from moonlight as only a quarter moon will be visible, and it will set just before 11pm.
Our planet is travelling through a patch of cosmic debris — material shed from the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which is on its own 133-year orbit of the Sun.
The meteors that create the display are small, often no bigger than a grain of sand. But they shoot through the atmosphere at around 135,000 miles per hour. The air in front of each meteor becomes compressed and with the intense friction heats up to thousands of degrees celsius — so the meteors burn up, leaving glowing tails of light in their wake.
The Perseids can also feature larger, pea-sized meteors that can create impressive fireballs as they explode in the upper atmosphere. If you’re very lucky, a fist-sized nugget may hit the atmosphere, creating a show that lasts several seconds.
They appear to come from between the constellations of Camelopardalis and Perseus — from which they get their name.
Even if clouds block the view early in the week, the meteors will carry on for some time yet and the moon will set early enough to allow a good view up to Thursday night.
As an aside: meteors are constantly crashing into the Earth’s atmosphere. It has been estimated that about 48.5 tonnes of meteoritic material falls on Earth each day. But as they usually don’t come in concentrated showers, they are much more difficult to spot.