Stargazers will have a spectacular week of skywatching, as a meteor shower follows a solar eclipse that will sweep across parts of the continental United States from August 12 to August 13.
The eclipse will be partial and will only take a “small bite out of the Sun,” according to NASA, with the amount of lunar overlay varying by location from North Carolina to Alaska.
Visible debris breaking off the subsequent shower, dubbed “the Perseids,” will peak on the evening of August 12 into the early morning hours of August 13 with a path of totality across Greenland, Iceland and Spain.
As the Earth passes through the debris stream of the Comet Swift-Tuttle, “tiny bits of comet dust hit our atmosphere at high speed, they burn up as bright streaks of light,” creating the aerial phenomenon known as a “shower,” according to NASA.
50 to 100 meteors can be seen per hour, making the Perseids the most plentiful of all annual meteor showers alongside the presence of “fireballs.”
Fireballs, or unusually bright meteors — often called “shooting stars” — are meteors that shine brighter than the planet Venus.
These dazzling light displays are caused by significantly larger pieces of space rock, such as direct fragments from asteroids or comets, entering Earth’s atmosphere at very high speeds.
The new moon arriving on August 12 will create ideal, dark conditions in the skies.
NASA instructs astrophiles to look toward the northeast and watch the Perseus constellation clear the horizon, where the meteors originate — however, they can appear anywhere.
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