The Perseids - How to View the Best Meteor Shower

A time lapse image of the Perseids meteor shower. Each streak of light is different shooting star that lasted for no more than a second. They all seem to radiate out of a central point in the constellation of Perseus.

Nothing in stargazing quite beats the experience of spotting a shooting star. For just the briefest of moments, a bright light streaks across the sky in a dazzling display. With the Perseids Meteor Shower starting this week on July 17 and lasting until August 24 it’s a great time to go hunting for shooting stars.

What is a Meteor Shower?

Despite the name, a shooting star is not a star at all, but rather a piece of space debris entering Earth’s atmosphere and burning up in a display of light. Meteor showers are the events that occur when the Earth, on its orbit around the Sun, passes through a field of debris. The debris fields are left behind by comets. The brilliant tail of a comet is a trail of pieces of ice and rock detaching from the greater body. As it moves in an orbit of its own, it leaves a trail behind. When the Earth’s orbit crosses the comet’s orbit, that’s when we get a meteor shower.

What Makes the Perseids Special?

The Perseids shower is named for the constellation Perseus, as that’s the location in the sky where the shooting stars appear to originate from. Currently, Perseus is located just beneath the northern horizon right after sunset, and rises by midnight. But the shower takes place across much of the sky, so it doesn’t matter if Perseus is visible or not.

A diagram showing the location of Perseus in the sky on the night of the peak of the Perseids. It also shows how the shooting stars will seem to radiate out from Perseus.

The Perseids are considered one of the best meteor showers of the year. While they’re not the most active shower—that would be the Geminids in December with their 120-150 shooting stars an hour—the Perseids do take second place with over 100 shooting stars per hour during the peak. What makes the Perseids special is that they take place during the warm summer months, making them far more viewer-friendly. The Perseids are also longer than the average shower, lasting over a month.

Part of the reason for the prolific number of shooting stars from the Perseids is its comet of origin, Comet Swift-Tuttle. The famous comet passes by Earth once every 133 years—having last stopped by in 1992—and leaves behind a rich trail of debris.

How Do I see the Perseids?

If you want to see some shooting stars for yourself, all you need to do is keep an eye out. Make sure you pick a good spot to stargaze from, then just let yourself stare upwards and take in the sight of the stars. Try not to focus on any one point, and instead take it all in at once and keep an eye out for any motion. That motion is the easiest way to spot a shooting star.

The best time to see the Perseids is near its peak time, which occurs on the night of August 12/morning of August 13. It’s during this time that the Earth will be passing through the densest portion of Comet Swift-Tuttle’s trail. 2026 is an especially great year to view the Perseids, as that night will also be the night of the new moon, meaning there will be no moonlight of any kind to drown out the light of the shooting stars. If you can’t make it out on August 12/13, then any time during the preceding or following weeks will still be high activity nights with little to no moonlight. During these times, assuming you’ve picked the right area to stargaze from, you should be able to see a new shooting star every few minutes, if not multiple a minute.