Update: The Perseids meteor shower will be at its peak this weekend, starting at 1 a.m. on Sunday, August 13.

Jump straight to how to spot these meteors, where to see the Perseids this weekend and how to watch for Delta Aquariids too.

Are you ready for another meteor shower to delight your early morning sky watching? How about a two-for-one deal?

As the annual Perseids meteor shower grows closer to its peak of activity in mid-August, another, lesser-known shower, called the Delta Aquariids, is already underway, and will continue into late August.

That means as you camp out in the early morning on August 13 to watch Perseids, you may see some Delta Aquariids as well!

The fun is in figuring out which streaks belong to which shower.

Where and when to see the Delta Aquariids

The Delta Aquariids shower is active between July 18 and August 21, with peak activity around July 29–31. The shower can produce as many as 20 meteors per hour if viewing conditions are good.

Delta Aquariids tend to be faint meteors, making them more difficult to spot except when the sky is very dark. This year, the moon approaches its full phase during the Delta Aquariids’ peak, but sets a few hours before dawn, offering an early morning window of moonless sky.

On the morning of July 29, the moon sets just after 2 a.m., and on July 30 after 3 a.m., allowing for prime meteor-watching conditions.

A night-sky constellation map. — Map of the sky looking to the southeast, around 2 a.m., on Aug. 13, 2023. The radiant point for the Perseids meteor shower, the constellation Perseus, rises over the northeastern horizon, while that of the Delta Aquariids (Aquarius) rests high in the south. The planet Saturn punctuates the modest stars of Aquarius, offering a visual guide. (Chabot Space & Science Center/Image created using Stellarium)

If you choose to look for these meteors during the shower peak, pick a safe dark-sky location away from city lights and schedule your viewing to begin no earlier than 2 or 3 a.m.

You’ll have a good two or three hours of dark, moonless sky before twilight begins to glow.

Look toward the south, taking in the view of the southern sky with your gaze centered about halfway between the horizon and the zenith point directly overhead to spot the constellation Aquarius. The Delta Aquariids shower is named for one of the constellation’s brighter stars, Delta Aquarii.

None of the stars of Aquarius is outstandingly bright, but this year there’s a handy visual reference to guide your eye: The planet Saturn sits right in the middle of the constellation.

Where and when to see the Perseids

If you decide to skip viewing the Delta Aquariids during its peak, you still have a shot at seeing some cascading meteors during the more prominent Perseids shower, which will peak on the morning of Sunday, August 13.

Watch for meteors anytime after 1 a.m. Perseids tend to be brighter than Delta Aquariids, and this shower reliably produces up to 60 meteors per hour in dark viewing conditions.

The waning crescent moon doesn’t rise until 3:30 a.m., so once again, you will have two or three hours of dark meteor-viewing time — and the moon’s thin crescent won’t put too much light into the sky anyway.

A meteor as seen in space from the International Space Station. — A Perseid meteor captured by astronaut Ron Garan from the International Space Station. (NASA/Ron Garan)

At 1 a.m. on August 13, the constellation Perseus, for which the Perseids shower is named, will be rising in the northeast. Perseus is this shower’s “radiant,” the point where the meteors appear to streak from.

Now, putting the two overlapping showers together, how do you tell a Delta Aquarid from a Perseid? The game is on!

The answer can be determined by identifying the two showers’ radiant points: where a time-lapse photo would show meteor trails radiating from.

After midnight on August 13, Perseus will sit low on the northeastern horizon, while Aquarius will rest higher in the sky to the south.[aside label="More astronomy coverage" tag="astronomy"]Focus your attention toward the east, and your gaze will encompass the radiants of both showers. When you see a meteor streak across the sky, make note of which direction it is traveling. If it’s flying from a more northerly direction, then it’s a Perseid. From the south? Then it’s an Aquariid.

But it doesn’t really matter. A meteor is a meteor and a sheer thrill to see — no matter what time of the night you see it.

So, what is a meteor anyway?

A meteor is a tiny speck of metal or rock from space that enters Earth’s atmosphere and is incinerated in a dazzling flash of incandescence (hopefully) before it can reach Earth’s surface. Before hitting the atmosphere, usually at speeds of multiple miles per second, most meteors are no bigger than a pebble.

Depending on the size, speed and composition of a meteor, it may be bright or faint, fast or less so, or even tinted with color — orange, green, yellow. Fainter meteors appear white because they are not bright enough to stimulate our color vision.

What causes a meteor shower?

A meteor shower happens when the Earth moves through a cloud of dust particles left behind in the wake of a comet (or sometimes an asteroid) that traveled through our part of the solar system at some point in the past.

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As a comet orbits the sun, it can shed gas and dust along the way, especially when it passes close to the sun and heats up. Then, some of its frozen volatile material (mostly water) evaporates, blowing into space and carrying bits of dust and small rocks with it.

Every year when Earth moves through a given stream of comet dust, we enjoy a meteor shower. We always see Perseids, for example, in mid-August because that’s the time of year when Earth returns to that particular trail of dust.

Where do these meteors come from?

Most meteor showers can be traced to a specific parent comet.

A comet streaking across space. — Comet 96P/Machholz. This image was captured by one of NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft. (NASA/STEREO)

The Delta Aquariids are believed to be the dusty debris left behind by a 4-mile-wide comet named 96P/Machholz, which was discovered by amateur astronomer Donald Machholz in 1986 from the Loma Prieta peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains. 96P/Machholz orbits the sun about every five years, coming within 12 million miles of the sun, three times closer than the planet Mercury. These characteristics have earned 96/Machholz the designation of a “sun-grazing comet.”

In contrast, the instigating comet of the Perseids meteor shower, 109P/Swift-Tuttle, takes the long way around the sun, orbiting once every 133 years. Swift-Tuttle was discovered in 1862 by Lewis Swift and Horace Parnell Tuttle. Their independent observations were made only three days apart, earning them a shared comet name. Swift-Tuttle is also larger than 96P/Machholz, with a nucleus diameter of 16 miles.

A sequence of three images of a comet grazing the sun. — A sequence of images of the sun-grazing comet 96P/ Machholz as it passed through perihelion last January, coming within only 12 million miles of the sun. Captured by the LASCO instrument aboard the NASA/ESA SOHO spacecraft, the sun’s disk is hidden behind a blackout occulting disk, revealing the bright plasma of the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona. (SOHO/NASA/ESA)

A version of this story originally published on July 19, 2023.

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