Weather & Radar
Home / Editor's Pick /

Annual astro highlight: Perseid Meteor Shower to peak tonight

15:00
12 August 2023

Annual astro highlight
Perseid Meteor Shower to peak tonight

Shooting starA shooting star from the Perseids spotted in Harzgerode, Germany earlier this week. - © Torsten Brehme

One of the year's most active meteor showers is set to peak tonight, and with a new moon approaching soon, the night sky will be perfect for spotting shooting stars.

The Perseid Meteor Shower can produce up to 100 meteors an hour on particularly active years. We are set to see the peak overnight. While they will be visible from sunset, the best hours arrive between midnight and 05:30 am.

From the UK and Ireland, the radiant will appear from the Perseus constellation. After midnight, the Earth will have rotated to face the shower offering the most and brightest shooting stars.

Weather outlook

Saturday is marked by scattered showers and overcast conditions. By sunset, rain begins to clear in most areas, though some pockets remain by midnight with light clouds elsewhere.

By the early hours of Sunday morning the clearest skies can be found in southern Ireland, northeastern to central England, plus the far north and southwest of Scotland.

Tips for stargazing

For the best chance to see a meteor, find a dark area away from light pollution. Ideally in the countryside away from towns.

Specks of dust create the show

The nocturnal celestial spectacle is caused by the dust plume of the Comet Swift-Tuttle, which passes the earth every year in August.

When the dust particles, which are only millimetres in size, hit the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 37 miles per second, they are abruptly slowed down and heated to white heat.

The particles then burn up in fractions of a second and paint their luminous trail on the night sky.

This constellation can be seen after dark in the northeast sky. The constellation Cassiopeia above Perseus helps with orientation. However, the shooting stars can also spread all over the sky.

Ryan Hathaway
More on the topic
Pollen feature in app
Wednesday 30 April 2025

Pollen on Weather & Radar

Stay a step ahead of hay fever
Wednesday 23 April 2025

Highs on TemperatureRadar

Warmer weekend for south UK & Ireland
Thursday 1 May 2025

Beating a 1990 record

Hottest start to May on record
All weather news
This might also interest you
Friday 2 May 2025

Breakfast brief

Increasingly cloudy, heat starts to fade
Friday 2 May 2025

Thanks to a low in Iberia

Southern England warmer than Spain
Tuesday 29 April 2025

Breakfast brief

Sunny as temperatures continue to rise
All articles
Weather & Radar

www.weatherandradar.ie

facebooktwitteryouTubeContact uslinkList
Privacy Policy | Legal info