Perseids meteor shower
Next peak: 13 August 2027, 08:00 UTC. Up to 100 meteors an hour under an ideally dark sky.
The meteors of warm August nights, also called the Tears of St Lawrence, after the martyr whose day is 10 August. Dust of Comet Swift-Tuttle. Most are seen after midnight, when Perseus stands high in the northeast.
The radiant lies in the constellation Perseus. The meteors appear all over the sky, though; their trails only point back to it.
Peaks until 2030
| Peak (UTC) | Moon | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Aug 2027, 08:00 | 87 % | poor, bright moon |
| 12 Aug 2028, 14:00 | 59 % | fair |
| 12 Aug 2029, 20:00 | 10 % | good, little moonlight |
| 13 Aug 2030, 02:00 | 100 % | poor, bright moon |
Moon: how much of its disc is lit. The nights before and after the peak are often hardly weaker.
When you see the most
- London: around 04:15 local time, the radiant 67° up
- New York: around 04:45 local time, the radiant 64° up
- Sydney: the radiant does not rise in the dark that night
Best far from lights; give your eyes a quarter of an hour to adapt, no binoculars, with as much sky in view as possible. The higher the radiant, the more meteors.