To catch the best view of a prolific meteor shower, scrap your plans tonight and get to bed for an early morning tomorrow.

The Perseid meteor shower sprinkles Earth with cometary dust every year from July to August. This year the event peaks the mornings of Aug. 12 and 13 around 2 a.m. local time for northern stargazers and 6 a.m. for those in the Southern Hemisphere.

But there’s a problem: The full moon waxes this weekend.

Theoretically, stargazers can catch between 50 and 80 shooting stars per hour from the darkest and most remote viewing locations. The full moon, however, will rise at dusk and set near dawn through the Perseids’ peak. The bright light will obscure most cometary debris that happens to streak through Earth’s thick atmosphere as meteors.

To get the best view, plan for a very early rise tomorrow, just after the moon sets. For most stargazers, the moon will sink below the horizon around 3 a.m. local time. (Check the exact moonrise and moonset time in your location with a simple calculator.)

The rate of meteors won’t be as good as during the peak this weekend, but lucky observers in dark skies should still see around 20 per hour. Northern observers should look to the northeast in the constellation Perseus. Southern observers will need to wait very close to dawn to see the shower on top of the northern horizon.

Comet Swift-Tuttle left behind the trail of debris that Earth sweeps through each year to create the Perseids.

As cometary particles begin entering ever-thicker regions of Earth’s atmosphere — between 45 and 60 miles up — they compress air in front, heat up and disintegrate into bright glowing trails. The particles range in size from grains of sand to small boulders, the latter being much less common.

If any readers out there take photos of the meteor shower this week, Wired Science would love to see and share them! Send full-resolution photos (or a link to them) and a credit to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and make the subject line includes the words “meteor shower.”

Image: Adcuz/Flickr

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