Source: Vancouver Sun

The Perseid meteor shower peaks overnight Monday.

It does mean staying up late or getting up early, however: The best viewing times begin after 2 a.m., but the moon is in the way before it sets.

“There’s not much of a window, the moon sets at 3 a.m. (Tuesday morning) and it starts getting light around 4,” said Hayley Miller of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vancouver Centre. “This hasn’t been much of a year for the Perseid shower.

“But I was out last week and saw a few things after the moon set around 11 p.m. You’ll be able to see some of it for up to another week.”

While Monday night is the best night for viewing, the shower continues for a few night to come.

Good places to watch the annual shooting star show include Aldergrove Regional Park, Porteau Cove, Spanish Banks, Boundary Bay, Whitecliff in West Vancouver, Burnaby Mountain and McDonald Dark Sky Park in Abbotsford.

Or go to darksitefinder.com to find a good spot.

“Basically, anywhere outside of the city,” Miller said.

According to NASA, the Perseid shooting-star shower is caused by debris left by a comet called Swift-Tuttle. That sandy debris slams into the Earth’s atmosphere as the planet whizzes through the cosmic dust at 100,000 kilometres an hour and the result is the fireballs and shooting stars we associate with meteor showers.

It’s all part of the five to 300 tonnes of cosmic dust that enter Earth’s atmosphere every day, according to universetoday.com.

The Perseid shower, so-named because it shows up in the part of the sky containing the constellation Perseus, is prized by skywatchers for the high rate of meteors and fireballs, but this year’s viewing has been hindered by a full moon during peak showers, which reduces meteor rates from more than 60 an hour to 15 to 20, NASA said.

The U.S. space agency recommends you don’t use binoculars or a telescope, allow yourself 30 minutes in the dark so your eyes get adjusted (don’t check your phone during that time), lie back in a dark spot away from city lights and enjoy.

Meteors are generally seen all over the sky, the space agency said, so you needn’t worry about looking in the right direction. But the Perseus constellation lies in the northern sky.

Swift-Tuttle isn’t actually nearby, it’s off on its own orbit around the sun, but it is the largest solar-system object to pass close to Earth repeatedly, NASA said. It’s nucleus has a radius of 26 kilometres and it’s next Earth flyby is due in 2026.

You can also catch the shower on NASA’s meteor watch Facebook site or at NASA’s All Sky Fireball network.