Meteor showers to light up sky in upcoming nights weather permitting

Many shooting stars can be seen during the annual meteor shower Perseid in the upcoming nights, providing the weather permits a glimpse at the sky. The shooting stars are visible with the naked eye as long as the person is standing in a dark spot and there are no clouds.

The chances to see shooting stars are high this year, astronomers said because the moon hardly blocks the view. The last time the likelihood to see the meteor shower was this great was in 1997.

The first shooting stars can be Sunday night and will continue into the upcoming week. The meteor shower will reach its peak on Friday between 3 and 4 a.m. Around 70 shooting stars will fall in that hour.

The Perseids get their name from the star constellation Perseus from which they seem to derive. In reality, they are dust particles and chunks from the Comet Swift-Tuttle. The meteors hurtle through the sky at more than 200,000 kilometers per hour. When the Earth flies through the debris cloud of the comet, the particles incinerate in the atmosphere at an altitude of 100 kilometers.

The constellation can be seen when looking northeast in the sky. In the past, the meteor shower was called the Tears of Laurentius because the stars fell on the name day of St. Laurent.