Perseids 2026
The year's most beloved shower — fast, bright meteors with persistent trains.
Viewing conditions this year
The Moon will be 0% illuminated on the peak night — excellent — dark skies. With dark skies, expect to catch a meaningful fraction of the quoted 100/hour ideal rate — find dark country sky and the Perseids should deliver.
What causes a meteor shower?
Comets (and a few asteroids) shed streams of dust along their orbits. When Earth crosses one of those streams — the same dates every year — the particles hit our atmosphere in parallel, appearing to radiate from one point in the sky. Each visible meteor is typically a fragment the size of a sand grain, vaporizing 80–100 km overhead.
How to actually see meteors
No telescope — your eyes have the widest field of view. Get away from city lights, give your eyes 20–30 minutes to dark-adapt (no phone screens), lie back, and watch as much sky as possible. Rates are almost always best after midnight, when your side of Earth faces into the stream. The quoted ZHR (zenithal hourly rate) is a perfect-conditions ceiling; expect to see a third to half of it under a good dark sky, less with moonlight.
Where it comes from
Perseids meteors are debris shed by 109P/Swift-Tuttle. They appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, and the shower is best seen from the northern hemisphere. Rates build over the active window (Jul 17 – Aug 24) and drop quickly after the peak.
Get a push the evening this shower peaks
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What’s passing, what’s visible, what hit.