3 Meteor Showers Are Active: How and When to Watch Fireball Season

If you like to stay up late and stare at the night sky, get ready for a back-to-back feature: Two meteor showers are reaching their peak this week. They are the Southern Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids. And if those weren’t enough, a third event, the Perseids, is running in the background as it prepares for its mid-August peak, becoming the shower of the summer.With all this activity, you could call it meteor season.“Almost any night when it’s dark and clear, you’re going to see a good number of meteors,” said Peter Brown, a physicist at Western University in Ontario. When are the showers peaking? Meteor showers are caused when Earth passes through the rubble trailing a comet or an asteroid as our planet swings around the sun. This debris, which can be as small as a grain of sand, leaves behind a glowing stream of light as it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.Showers occur around the same time every year and can last for days or weeks, but there is only a small window when they are at their peak. Because Earth crosses the cometary debris fields that create the Southern Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids around the same time, the peak of the two showers overlap every year.The Southern Delta Aquarids, which have been active since about July 18, are to reach their peak on the night between Monday and Tuesday. They are best seen in the Southern Hemisphere in the constellation Aquarius.The Alpha Capricornids have been active since July 7. They are to peak between Tuesday and Wednesday and are visible from both hemispheres in the constellation Capricorn.According to Robert Lunsford, the fireball report coordinator of the American Meteor Society, the best time to catch the double showers is well after midnight, when the points in the night sky from which they radiate are high above the horizon. Light from the moon, which will be as much as 30% full, may obscure some of the show. (Moonlight affects visibility in the same way as light pollution, washing out fainter sources of light in the sky.)The Alpha Capricornids and the Southern Delta Aquarids will appear to originate from the southern part of the sky, but you can tell which meteor came from which shower by its features, Lunsford said. The Alpha Capricornids are bright and slow, tending to last several seconds in the sky. Streaks from the Southern Delta Aquarids, on the other hand, are faster and fainter.Those two showers are the stars of this week, but if you look to the northern part of the sky, you may also be able to spot the bright, speedy meteors from the Perseids, which come from the constellation Perseus. Known as one of the best showers of the year, the Perseids have a sharp peak on the night between Aug. 11 and 12.That’s unlike the Southern Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids, whose peaks are more like plateaus. “Any time between now and the first few days of August, their activity should be pretty much the same,” Lunsford said.All three showers will contribute to a climbing rate of meteors observed in the coming days.Brown recommends monitoring a fireball meter his university helps produce; it shows real-time meteor activity levels.When the rate reaches about 90 sightings per hour, he said, “that means it’s time to go look for meteors.” How do I watch a meteor shower? There are tips to keep in mind when trying to view meteor showers. Michelle Nichols, director of public observing at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, recommends forgoing the use of telescopes or binoculars.“You just need your eyes and, ideally, a dark sky,” she said.That’s because meteors can shoot across large swaths of the sky, so observing equipment can limit your field of view.Some showers are strong enough to produce up to 100 streaks an hour by themselves, although it most likely won’t be dark enough for you to see that many, so keep your expectations in check.“Almost everybody is under a light-polluted sky,” Nichols said. “You may think you’re under a dark sky, but in reality, even in a small town, you can have bright lights nearby.”Planetariums, local astronomy clubs or even maps can help you figure out where to get away from excessive light. The best conditions for catching a meteor shower are a clear sky with no moon or cloud cover, at some time between midnight and sunrise. Make sure to give your eyes at least 30 minutes to adjust to seeing in the dark.Nichols also recommends wearing layers, even during the summer. “You’re going to be sitting there for quite a while, watching,” she said. “It’s going to get chilly, even in August.”Bring a cup of cocoa or tea for even more warmth. Then sit back, scan the sky and enjoy the show.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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