3 days ago
Stargazers assemble: Perseid meteor shower set for best view
Stargazers should get their telescopes ready as the Perseid meteor shower is on course to reach its peak tonight and tomorrow.
The celestial fireworks will be on full display over Ireland and August 12 is the best time to see them.
The event is associated with the dusty debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. The meteor shower will be on full display on August 12. Pic: Samuel de Roman/Anadolu via Getty Images
The meteors are mostly no bigger than a grain of sand, but they burn up as they hit the Earth's atmosphere at 36 miles per second to produce a shooting stream of light in the sky.
They are called Perseids because they seem to dart out of the constellation Perseus.
Peak temperatures can reach anywhere from 1,648C to 5,537C as they hit the atmosphere.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Resident Astronomer at Blackrock Observatory in Cork Danielle Wilcox said the best time to view the spectacle is after sunset and before the moon rise as it will be the darkest time.
She added that there are around 12 meteor showers every year but Perseid has the most and brightest meteors. Stargazers will want to get their telescopes out. Pic: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
Wilcox said: 'These are very predictable, they happen every year at the same time.
'What is happening is we have comets that come from the outer solar system and they come in from the sun and they come near the sun and start to break up.
'So you have all this debris that comes from the comet, so you will have ice, rock and different things that are coming from the comet.
'And it leaves this cloud and it is in the same spot in space, so as we are going around the sun, Earth slams into this cloud and passes through all this debris in August every year.'
Wilcox reassured anyone who will miss the meteor shower tonight or tomorrow, not to worry as it continues for the next week.
Perseus is now visible in the north-eastern sky but for the best chance of seeing the meteors, experts say it is worth turning towards the east-south-east, looking towards Saturn, or more to the north, looking towards the constellation of Ursa Major.
