The Perseids, a prolific meteor shower, is now visible in our beautiful Hi-Desert skies, with the peak in activity between August 9 and 14. The maximum is expected during the night of August 12, depending on the particular location of the stream. During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. They can be seen all across the sky, but because of the path of Swift-Tuttle’s orbit, Perseids are primarily visible in the northern hemisphere. As with all meteor showers, the rate is greatest in the pre-dawn hours, since the side of the Earth nearest to turning into the sun scoops up more meteors as the Earth moves through space. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth’s atmosphere is called a meteor, most often referred to as a shooting star or falling star. A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to come out of from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth’s surface.
