In the coming days, numerous shooting stars will again be observed in the night sky. To see the Perseid swarm, onlookers should face east. This weekend, the shooting star stream will reach its maximum around three o’clock on Saturday morning, says the chairman of the Association of Star Friends in Germany, Sven Melchert. While the weather on Saturday morning and in the coming days usually allows a clear view of the night sky, there is another disruptive factor. The peak of the glowing cosmic debris is around 24 hours after full moon – and thus the light of the earth’s satellite disturbs the spectacle for onlookers.
When the moonlight isn’t too bright, stargazers can typically spot about 30 to 50 meteors an hour. This year, however, only the brightest specimens will probably be visible because the moon is above the horizon all night.
The weather doesn’t put a spanner in the works for the stargazers. “Looks good,” says the spokesman for the German Weather Service in Offenbach, Andreas Friedrich. There is no change in the weather and therefore continue to be mild and starry nights. “The conditions are wonderful all over Germany.” Only in the southeast from the Ore Mountains to the Bavarian Forest could there be clouds, but no cloud cover. And so Melchert also recommends: “The appearance of the Perseids is not limited to the short time of the maximum, you can also try your luck in the days before and after” – preferably lying comfortably with a relaxed view upwards in an easterly direction.
The Perseids appear to come from the constellation Perseus, but they are a cloud of debris from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle that Earth dips into each year as it orbits the Sun. According to the star friends, the comet was discovered independently by Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle on July 19, 1862 and takes around 133 years to orbit the sun. The comet should next be visible from Earth in 2126.