The Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks This Week Amid Ideal Viewing Conditions. Here’s How to Watch the Event’s Bright Shooting Stars

The much-anticipated annual event peaks on the night of August 12 into the next morning. This year, the moon won’t crash the party, as our natural satellite will be in its dark new moon phase

Sara Hashemi | Daily Correspondent

August 10, 2026 2:32 p.m.

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Stargazers, rejoice. The famous Perseid meteor shower, which has been active since mid-July, is expected to reach its peak on the night of August 12 into the next morning.

What’s more, viewing conditions should be ideal, depending on your local weather. The moon will be in its darkened new moon phase so it won’t crash the party during this year’s annual event, known for its speedy and bright “shooting stars.”

“The moon is beautiful, but it’s such a diva,” astronomer Aparna Venkatesan of the University of San Francisco tells the Associated Press’ Adithi Ramakrishnan. “New moon means we don’t have moonlight flooding the sky, and you tend to see way more meteors as a result.”

The Perseids are considered one of the best meteor showers for viewers in the Northern Hemisphere. They’re known for their fireballs—meteors that outshine Venus—which leave glowing trails as they blaze across the sky, according to NASA.

They also tend to be “more colorful than most showers” because of different chemical elements, Colorado astronomy guide Mark Laurin tells the Aspen Times’ Ryan Spencer. “You’ll get blues, you’ll get oranges, you’ll get the yellows, you’ll get the greens from calcium, silicon, iron, nickel, magnesium, things like that. That’s what makes the Perseids special.”

During the shower’s peak, viewers can witness as many as 50 to 100 meteors per hour if the viewing conditions are just right, meaning minimal light pollution and cloudless skies, per the NASA. However, the American Meteor Society estimates that the rate will be closer to 30 to 50. The bits of space rock will zoom by at a speed of roughly 37 miles per second.

The event gets its name from the constellation Perseus, the point in the sky from which the shooting stars appear to originate, called a radiant. But that’s not what’s actually producing these meteors. Like other showers, the Perseids are caused by the Earth passing through the trail of dust and particles left behind by an icy comet.

“Those little pieces of comet dust enter the Earth’s atmosphere at very high speed, heat up, strip off their outer layers and make meteors we see once a year,” explains Robert Quimby, an astronomer at San Diego State University, in a statement.

The comet that creates the Perseids is 109P / Swift-Tuttle, which has an icy core estimated to be 16 miles wide—more than twice the size of the object believed to have wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs. The connection between this comet and the meteor shower was made in 1865 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. Nevertheless, the Perseids are one of the oldest recorded meteor showers, with observations dating back more than 2,000 years.

To join the legacy of people who have watched the annual event over the past two millennia, Bob King at Sky & Telescope recommends starting to watch the sky around 10 p.m. on August 12. Make sure you’re as far from light pollution as possible and bring a lounging chair or a sleeping bag to lie on.

“The key to any meteor shower is dark skies,” Quimby says in the statement. If you’re not sure where to go, you can find the best spots by consulting your local planetarium or astronomy club.

Don’t worry about bringing any special equipment like binoculars with you—your eyes will be enough. Give yourself about 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness and avoid looking at your phone, suggests NASA.

If you’re out during the evening hours, look toward the north with your gaze halfway up in the sky and keep an eye out for long-lasting shooting stars, writes Robert Lunsford for the American Meteorological Society. By midnight, he adds, the radiant will be about one-third high in the sky, and meteors will shoot out in all directions. And by 4:00 a.m., it’ll be about two-thirds of the way up the sky, and around 90 percent of all Perseid meteors should be visible.

“The Perseids provide the opportunity to tune into the nocturnal landscape, feel the Earth turn under the steady stars, and watch meteor after meteor with anticipation and surprise,” King writes for Sky & Telescope.

And, as always, if you can’t make it outside this time around or your area has bad weather, you can always try again next year.

Sara Hashemi is a science writer and fact-checker currently based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Sierra, The Body, Maisonneuve magazine and more.