Got a calendar? Circle this date: Friday, August 12th. Next to the circle write "before sunrise" and "Meteors!" Attach all of the above to your refrigerator in plain view so you won't miss the 2005 Perseid meteor shower. The Perseids come every year, beginning in late July and stretching into August. Sky watchers outdoors at the right time can see colorful fireballs, occasional outbursts and, almost always, long hours of gracefully streaking meteors. Among the many nights of the shower, there is always one night that is best. This year is August 12th through the 19th.
Right: A colorful Perseid streaks over Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. Photo credit: Dirk Obudzinski, August 12, 2004. View the gallery
The source of the shower is Comet Swift-Tuttle. Although the comet is nowhere near Earth, the comet's wide tail does intersect Earth's orbit.
We glide through it every year in July and August.
Tiny bits of comet dust hit Earth's atmosphere traveling 132,000 mph.
At that speed, even a tiny smidgen of dust makes a vivid streak of light--a meteor--when it disintegrates. The shower is most intense when Earth is in the dustiest part of the tail. Perseid meteors fly out of the constellation Perseus, hence their name.
The best time to watch is during the hours before sunrise when Perseus is high in the sky: sky map. Between 2 a.m. and dawn on August 12th, if you get away from city lights, you could see hundreds of meteors.