This summer, the sky comes alive with shooting stars. What you need to know about ongoing meteor showers.
The annual alpha Capricornids, the Southern delta Aquariids and the Perseid meteor showers are all currently active, with each celestial show set to last through mid-August.
Here's what to know about these meteor showers, and where and how you can spot shooting stars.
The alpha Capricornids
The alpha Capricornids and the Southern delta Aquariids will peak in activity at the end of this month, overnight from July 29 to 30, while the Perseids — often considered the best and most reliable shooting star display — will ramp up to its peak next month.
Skywatchers will likely encounter mostly favorable conditions for catching meteor showers this July, according to the American Meteor Society.
The alpha Capricornids meteor shower is not typically a strong display, but it can produce a number of bright fireballs while active. At its height, the meteor shower can produce around five shooting stars per hour under dark skies and clear conditions, according to the American Meteor Society.
The shower gets its name because the meteors appear to stream from the constellation of Capricorn. During this year's peak, the moon will be only 27% full, offering people on either side of the equator a chance to catch the celestial show.
The alpha Capricornids meteor shower occurs when Earth passes through clouds of dust particles and debris from the comet 169P/NEAT, which completes one orbit around the sun every 4.2 years. As pieces of debris hit the planet's atmosphere and vaporize, they create bright streaks of light that sometimes leave behind bright trails.
The Southern delta Aquariids
The Southern delta Aquariids, as their name suggests, are best viewed from the Southern Hemisphere. This meteor shower is capable of producing up to 25 meteors per hour under ideal conditions, but the shooting stars are typically fainter.
Southern delta Aquariids can be tricky to spot, according to NASA, but the best chances this year will likely be in the early morning hours.
The meteor shower is thought to be caused by pieces of the comet 96P/Machholz, which completes one orbit around the sun every 5.2 years.
The Perseids
Finally, the Perseids meteor shower is underway and is expected to peak overnight from Aug. 12 to 13. The Perseids are usually one of the most highly anticipated skywatching events of the year because the meteor shower occurs during warm summer months in the Northern Hemisphere and it typically delivers a high rate of shooting stars. Under ideal conditions, the Perseids can produce as many as 100 shooting stars per hour.
This year, however, the moon will be around 84% full, which will likely wash out meteors and 'severely compromise this shower at the time of maximum activity,' according to the American Meteor Society.
'Such conditions will reduce activity by at least 75% as only the brighter meteors will be visible,' the society said in its forecast.
The Perseids shower occurs when Earth passes through a cloud of dust particles and debris left over from a comet known as 109P/Swift-Tuttle.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Bloomberg
14 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Columbia Agrees to $200 Million Fine to Settle White House Fight
Columbia University reached a deal with the Trump administration to restore federal funding for research, easing a crisis that has strained the school's finances and upended its leadership. The school will pay a $200 million fine 'to settle claims related to discriminatory practices, marking a significant win for accountability in academia,' a senior White House official said on Wednesday.


CBS News
44 minutes ago
- CBS News
Northwestern study finds California life expectancy yet to recover since COVID-19
A new study from Northwestern University found that life expectancy in California has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, data that could indicate similar national trends. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that overdoses and cardiovascular diseases were the leading causes of life expectancy loss in California. COVID-19 also remained a contributing factor. Hannes Schwandt, Northwestern professor and lead researcher of the study, and his team analyzed California data because it is comprehensive and typically published ahead of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's national data. The researchers used California's Comprehensive Death Files and obtained population counts for calculating mortality rates from the American Community Survey. "California is the biggest state [by population], so it gives us an idea of trends," he said. Life expectancy is the estimated lifespan of a human based on prevailing age specific mortality rates, according to Northwestern University. "2020 was bad, 2021 was even worse, and then we didn't see a rebound, or even overshooting in life expectancy the next year. We saw continued deficit in life expectancy compared to 2019," Schwandt said. Schwandt compared it to the 1918 influenza pandemic, in which multiple studies show that life expectancy in the United States rebounded after one to two years, unlike COVID-19, which continues to impact life expectancy over five years later. The study found that Californians' life expectancy dropped nearly a year from 81.4 to 80.5 by 2024. While the life expectancy gap between income groups returned to pre-pandemic levels by 2024 after widening during 2020–2023, disparities between racial groups grew even larger. In 2024, Black people lived on average six and a half years less than white people in California. Black Californians experienced a slower but more prolonged decline in life expectancy: losing four years by 2021 due to COVID deaths, but the gap further widened due to fentanyl overdoses. Hispanic Californians had the most severe single-year life expectancy drop of five years in 2021 due to COVID-19. Still, overdoses and cardiovascular disease continue to reduce their life expectancy by more than a year. Overdoses impacted poor communities the hardest, while cardiovascular disease was the primary cause for the drop in life expectancy for wealthier and white people. "The fentanyl crisis particularly took off in 2020 and continues to be a problem," Schwandt said. Other research studies show a strong correlation between the COVID-19 pandemic and the fentanyl epidemic. A study published in the National Library of Medicine calls the pandemic an "important epoch in the opioid epidemic timeline." Societal disruptions, economic stress, and limited access to treatment increased the risk of overdoses, according to the study. Schwandt also said that overprescribing opioids is a part of the larger problem. In 2024, 87% of opioid overdose deaths in Cook County involved fentanyl. African Americans make up 53% of those total overdose deaths. A Penn State study found that by the start of the pandemic, a Black person over the age of 55 in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota was 5 times more likely to die of a drug overdose than a white person of the same age. "The good news is that in 2024, overdose deaths did decline for the first time," Scwandt said. "But because they increase so dramatically over the years, we are still in a territory that is unacceptable." Provisional data from the CDC found a nearly 24% decline in US drug overdose deaths. Schwandt said that increased deaths from cardiovascular disease could be potentially linked to obesity and Long COVID. "I think that's a really interesting hypothesis that we should explore more," he said. "Maybe in richer areas, people have more access to COVID treatment and survive, have a higher burden of Long COVID, which then could lead to higher cardiovascular mortality," Schwandt said. Long COVID is an all-encompassing name for the long-term symptoms and health effects a person can experience after contracting COVID-19, regardless of the severity of the case. Long COVID is a disorder that can impact almost all parts of the body, including the heart, brain, immune system, and gastrointestinal system. A 2024 study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that "undeniably, the Long COVID syndrome has a multifaceted interplay with the cardiovascular system." The researchers looked at 78 different studies to compile different cardiovascular manifestations of Long COVID and found that cardiac symptoms are the third most common clinical manifestation of the disease. Schwandt examines trends in life expectancy and compares the data in the U.S. to that of other developed countries to see how the U.S. can increase its life expectancy. "Countries like Spain, that have lower incomes, and less technology, and they're healthier and live longer [than the US]," he said. He looks at different causes, areas, and incomes throughout the U.S. and other developed countries to determine who is living the longest and why. Schwandt wants to expand the study once the U.S. numbers are available to researchers. "I'd like to analyze the data in rich and poor populations in other developed countries and compare them to the U.S. experience," he said. "How is the world recovering, and is there anything we can learn from that?"


Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
The Hidden Value Of Anecdotes, Anomalies And Outliers
The case for anecdotes, anomalies and outliers. getty James Spangler invented the portable vacuum cleaner out of necessity. He was a janitor at a department store but suffered from chronic asthma. Every time he swept the floor with a broom, dust would kick up and irritate his lungs. A personal dilemma led to the creation of an entirely new product category. Within a year, William Hoover purchased the patent and made the vacuum cleaner a commercial success. During the same time, Henry Ford introduced the principles of Taylorism to his assembly lines. Taylorism applies scientific methods to analyze workflows to improve efficiency and productivity. When Henry Ford introduced the first moving assembly line, it cut the time to build a T-model from 12 hours to 1.5 hours. Since then, many more companies have adopted the principles of scientific management. Marketing and advertising have undergone a similar shift from mad men to math men. Big ideas have given way to big data, complex attribution models and digital dashboards. But there is a hidden cost associated with obsessing over the manageable and measurable. Brands miss out on outliers that deviate from the norm. Nearly all breakthrough ideas and innovations begin on the periphery, not the centre. Brands have access to millions of data points, including CRM profiles, email data, transaction history, ad impressions, social media engagement, survey responses, product reviews, and more. However, such data is increasingly aggregated—delivered via digital dashboards—far removed from the context and emotional reality of the humans represented in the data. Binary codes of 0 and 1 fail to reflect the messiness of human life. The so-called average doesn't exist in the real world. If we only look at the aggregate, we miss the all-important outliers. These outliers are the seeds of the future, but are rarely captured in big data. Most economists were blindsided by the 2008 financial crisis. The overreliance on macro indicators like GDP growth, low unemployment and steady inflation overlooked outliers, weaker signals and emerging trends from the edges. The signs were apparent from the rising default rates on subprime mortgages in California, Nevada, and Florida. Had the economists stepped outside their models and talked with mortgage brokers, homeowners or construction workers, they would have seen what was happening long before the data confirmed the crisis. Similar signals are often missed in business because marketers are no longer talking with real people on the ground. In the words of John le Carré: "A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.' What's more, data is only a reflection of the past. It offers a rearview mirror picture. Not a forward-looking window into the future. The past can be a poor reflection of the future. We end up making investment decisions for an aggregated average consumer who doesn't exist in the real world. In 1983, Hermès' CEO Jean-Louis Dumas was randomly seated next to actress and singer Jane Birkin on a flight from Paris to London. Birkin was struggling to cram her wicker bag in the overhead compartment when its contents spilt on Dumas. She then asked the CEO of Hermès to design a handbag larger than the Kelly with pockets. Birkin famously sketched her ideal bag on an aeroplane sickness bag and the rest is history. The Hermès Birkin is now one of the most iconic and renowned bags in the world. Today, Hermès generates $15 billion in revenue, with a substantial portion of total sales coming from the Birkin bag. It can be easy to forget that the centrepiece of Hermès $200 billion luxury empire was born from a single random human interaction. Modern algorithms would overlook such anecdotal evidence because it is not statistically representative. Similarly, Ray-Ban aviators were made in the 1930s to protect U.S. pilots from the sun's glare at high altitudes. The lens was not invented for mass consumption, but for an extreme and exceptional use case. Nearly a century later, sunglasses are worn by millions of people, including Hollywood celebrities and the general public. During a business trip to promote chicken ramen, Japanese businessman Momofuku Ando observed busy American workers breaking up noodles in half before adding boiling water. The anecdotal observation inspired Ando to invent the cup noodle. Today, cup noodles are sold in over 100 countries worldwide, with cumulative global sales exceeding 50 billion units. Outliers and anecdotal observations make a disproportionate impact on value creation and business outcomes. The current fixation with statistically representative samples prevents brands from exploring the periphery where the future is already emerging. Most brands have little to no mechanism to scan for anecdotes and outliers. Marketing technology can help brands analyze millions of interactions in real-time. Enabling marketers to streamline workflows, track performance and drive personalization at scale. The purpose of this article isn't to advocate for a return to pre-digital marketing practices. On the contrary, it serves as a reminder not to overlook outliers as a powerful engine of innovation. In a world saturated with aggregated data, AI-generated content and synthetic panels, we shouldn't forget how outliers and extreme users introduce new ideas, products and behaviours to the market. Brands are drowning in data, but struggling with innovation and value creation. In uncertain times, managing, measuring and optimizing the core is important, but brands should be equally open to anecdotes and outliers that can unlock future growth. After all, deviation from the norm is a prerequisite for innovation.