Get Ready for the Perseid Meteor Shower! By Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist We are now less than a month away from the peak of the annual summertime display of shooting stars known as the Perseid meteor shower. And if conditions are favorable, there is a good chance that this year's performance could turn out to be better than average, thanks to a gravitational boost by the planet Jupiter. Assiduous observers have already begun to see members of the Perseid meteor stream — unusually early, as the shower's forerunners do not usually begin to make their appearance until the third week of July. While meteors appear on the order of only a few per hour at present, their numbers will begin to ramp up in earnest after Aug. 7, reaching their maximum during the predawn hours on Friday, Aug. 12. The moon will be just past first-quarter phase and will interfere with meteor viewing by lighting up the sky before midnight, but it will set at around 1 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 12, leaving the sky dark for about 3 1/2 hours before the first light of dawn begins to break in the east. [Perseid Meteor Shower 2016: When & How to See It]
They are the best of the meteor showers - brilliant if there is a clear sky - I first saw them clearly when we were in France sat on a beach on Oleron. Last time I had a clear view was in 1999 when we were in Cornwall waiting to see the eclipse next day = sod's law - it was raining the next day! since then it has been mostly cloudy on the evenings when it was visible - worth staying up for though if there is no cloud.
Brilliant - the 4 of us were sat on the beach back to back - and for over an hour one of us was shouting out - "There's another" - every few seconds