Stuck on our silly little planet in the abyss of space, there’s only so much of the universe’s wonders we can actually see.
But tomorrow, the Earth will get a front row seat to something pretty wonderful – a meteor shower, nature’s firework display.
The Perseid (Per-see-id) meteor shower is one of the strongest meteor showers each year, with as many as 150 colourful shooting stars an hour.
It has been active since July 17 and will last until August 24, but its peak, when activity is the greatest, is from tomorrow to Wednesday.
What causes it?
Space is full of near-endless rubbish: dirt, dust and ice. Sometimes, all this ice gets clumped into one big dirty snowball called a comet.
After gravity slings them into our Solar System, they leave behind trails of ice and rock that linger in space for years.
Eventually, as the Earth does laps around the Sun, we drift into these particles which enter the atmpsohere at such a speed that they burn up and become shooting stars.
This can last for days and even weeks, with the peak being when our planet is passing through the densest part of this cosmic debris.
From our point of view, the meteor shower will seemingly come from the same place in the sky.
In Perseid’s case, the bright fireballs come from muck left behind buy the Comet Swift-Tuttle which will comes from the constellation Perseus, a constellation in the northern sky.
When is the best time to see the Perseids meteor shower in the UK?
Getty Images)
The second the Sun sets, the Perseids will be visible, according to the Royal Museums Greenwich.
The best time to see the Perseids is between 12am and 5.30am.
How to watch the Perseids meteor shower in the UK
While you might assume you need telescopes and binoculors, you only need your eyes to see the hundreds of colourful streaks.
This expensive kit can obscure your vision, making just looking up the best option. Just make sure to give your eyes 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness.
How many meteors you’ll actually be able to see, however, depends a lot on where in the UK you live.
The shower will be visible everywhere in the UK, like most of the northern hemisphere.
Light pollution, however, can make seeing stars, let alone of the shooting kind, next to impossible. Planetariums, local astronomy clubs or even maps like this one can help you find the darkest spots near you.
The Moon could make things tricky, however. While the Full Moon was last week, our lunar neighbour will still be big and bright in the sky.
According to timeanddate, the Moon also won’t set until about 9/10am, so the lights from the meteor shower will be competing with the Moon.
Tools like this one from the Global Meteor Network show how many meteors per hour will be visible.
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