The Perseid meteor shower will be visible across the UK tonight—here’s how to spot it.
It’s not every day you get the chance to gaze upon a beautiful meteor shower. Not every day you get clear skies in Britain either, but let’s hope, because tonight the stunning Perseid meteor shower is set to be visible from Manchester.
This week marks the Earth passing through a cloud of cometary dust. Debris left from Comet Swift-Tuttle, to be precise. The best times to see it lie between 11-13 August, peaking in the early hours of Thursday morning, but it’ll be visible as it dies down through the month’s end.
Stargazers will need to look at the sky at its darkest point. This will be between midnight and around 3am. It is also advised that viewers distance themselves from spots with heavy light pollution. In the right conditions, we could see over 100 meteors per hour.
Perseids are around the size of a grain of sand, but produce a shooting stream of light as they hit the night sky. They are known to be one of the brightest and most active meteor showers visible to stargazers. According to the Royal Observatory, some can even produce spectacular fireballs.
So, if you can’t sleep because of the heat (we feel your pain), why not check out some magical meteors? They have it a lot worse than we do now, reaching temperatures between 1,648 to 5,537 degrees celsius.