View meteors, fireballs now through Thursday

Astronomists are gearing up for the annual Perseid meteor show. Be sure to stay up and look up! This year is expected to be especially exciting as early (June) reports indicated as many as one every two minutes.

Every year, Earth enters space that had been occupied by Comet Swift-Tuttle. It, like Earth, orbits the sun. The comet leaves a trail of cosmic debris, or meteoroids, as it revolves. And during every August we cross this stream. Meteors can be seen in great numbers now through Thursday. Observers in the Northern Hemisphere will be able to view the streaks of light produced from meteors entering our atmosphere throughout the nights. Best viewing is expected to be between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. ET on Wednesday, according to Space.com. Fireballs as well as meteor tails are often visible to the naked eye. The yearly occurrence is named after the region of sky with which it appear to start from: the constellation Perseus. The meteors may not "shower" past this week, but they will continue to entering our atmosphere with less frequency until at least through the end of August. According to scientist Sally Stephens, and luckily for us, the comet will not collide into the Earth anytime soon, if ever. Its orbit is stable; our closest call with the body will come in 3044, when it could “pass within a million miles of Earth, a true cosmic near miss.”