Brad's Astro Extra: Best way to watch the Perseid meteor shower

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This weekend also will be the Perseids Meteor Shower!

Speaking to, Bill Cooke, a meteor expert at NASA, said: "The moon is very favourable for the Perseids this year, and that'll make the Perseids probably the best shower of 2018 for people who want to go out and view it".

Unfortunately, it's expected to be mostly cloudy for most of us at that time. When the Earth approaches the stream of debris, the Perseid meteor shower appears.


How can you see the meteor shower? Because of this, meteor rates could be as high as 200 per hour. Those tiny bits of debris, traveling at around 132,000 miles per hour, create vivid streaks of light when they collide with Earth's atmosphere.

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The comet itself will come extremely close to Earth in a "near-miss" in 2126. The meteor shower is formed from the debris from the Swift-Tuttle comet as the tiny debris enters the Earth's atmosphere. Your eyes would take about 20 minutes to get used to the darkness, and then you just need to be patient. The best place to enjoy this natural light show will be away from bright lights and outside of major cities, like Barrie. On the flip side, though, the sky will light up for you for 2 nights in a row over the weekend.

A number of planets will also be highly visible. Meteor showers are a great opportunity for time-lapse videos and long-exposure photography, allowing your shots of the night sky to turn into van Gogh-like paintings of this starry spectacle.

-If you plan on capturing them on camera, don't forget to lower the shutter speed!

The peak viewing time will be Sunday at around midnight. Around 10 p.m., the meteors' visibility should begin to increase.