The perseid meteor shower peaks at 2 AM tonight in Connecticut. This year a clear sky will go to waste. A full moon will light up the night sky making it harder to view nature's light show. Stupid moon.
The perseid meteor shower is really just debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle which has been orbiting the sun for centuries. As debris collides with the earth’s atmosphere at 133,200 mph, the debris heats up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat causes the long lived streaks you see in the sky. On a good night you can see one meteor a minute.
It will be very challenging to see the meteor shower tonight but if you're still trying, go to an area with little or no surrounding city lights and look up! The best time to see the perseids will be after midnight through the pre-dawn hours Saturday morning.
Good luck. I’ll be staring up at the sky too! Here is a fantastic picture from last year in CT. My friend Al Chaniewski took several pictures with a slow exposure and compiled them in photoshop.
You can see more of Al's pics here.
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