Perseid meteor shower peaks this weekend. This is how you can see it.

Frank Florian with the Telus World of Science joined CTV Morning Live’s meteorologist Cory Edel to talk about the magical experience the Perseid meteor shower will bring this weekend.

 

Cory Edel: The best meteor shower of the year is about to light up the night sky. What is the Perseid meteor shower and why is it so special?

Frank Florian: The Perseid meteor shower is probably the year's best meteor shower. It recurs every year around August 11 and 12 and it happens during the summer period, which is a nice time to get out and actually look up and see some of these little streaks of light called meteors crossing the sky. The meteor show itself is caused by a comet called Swift-Tuttle that leaves behind material in its wake. The last time this comet came into the inner solar system was back in 1992 but that means that we're still going through material left by that comet. So every year around this time, the earth plows through that particular region of space where the comet's orbit is, and we encounter all these little particles left behind by the comet passing through the Earth's atmosphere.

Cory: So it's actually passing through the Earth's atmosphere. Does any of it make it to the surface?

Frank: You might think that they do, but they don't. These small particles from cometary bodies are quite small. They're like a little grain of sand. Sometimes you can see some brighter meteors associated with these meteor showers, but these fragments are usually too small to make it to the ground. Although, that doesn't mean that when you're looking at the night sky, that you may not see a really bright meteor that might not be associated with the meteor shower, that might make it to the ground. Then you can go out and pick out a piece of rock like this, a meteorite. These particular meteor showers don't create meteorites. They just create this incredible light show in our evening, night sky.

Cory: Do we need anything to watch it? Or are we good just with our plain eyes?

Frank: Yeah, just go outside. Get away from bright city lights. You want to have a nice dark viewing location to see the most number of meteors. I'd recommend just lying back in a lawn chair and look up. These meteors will seem to radiate or move away from the northeast part of the sky in the early evening. As the night goes on, the radiance of the shower, the point in space near the constellation of Perseus, is the region that will gain elevation, and by morning it'll be like it's raining down. That's why some type of lawn chair or something that you can lounge on is great, because you can take in as much of the sky as possible and be able to hopefully see a lot of these meteors through the night.

Cory: Is one of the days better to view than the other?

Frank: The meteor shower itself has a very broad range of times that it's visible, but the peak time is going to be this Sunday night, August 11, right through into the early morning hours of August 12. If people are out and about on that particular night, that's the night that we should expect to see the most number of meteors associated with the Perseid meteor shower. Give a few days before, a few days after that peak, you'll still be able to see a few on any given night, but just not as many. If you really want to see the show, get out there on Sunday night, stay up right through until Monday morning, and you'll probably be able to see a fair number of these bright meteors.

Cory: Awesome. Is there anything else that we could see when we're out watching for it?

Frank: The sun being so active is actually spewing forth all this material in the solar wind and the Aurora over the past month has been pretty spectacular. It was a really bright event last weekend, and we should expect to see maybe some more Aurora in our evening sky as well. Being able to see bright meteors with Aurora in the sky, that's almost magical.

Cory: You can learn more about the Perseid meteor shower by visiting Telus World of science's website. Twos.ca.