Perseid meteor showers over Philly are approaching their annual peak. Don’t wait until next year

After a stormy week atop one of the hottest summer periods on record in Philly, those in the mood for a cool, refreshing meteor shower are in luck this weekend.

The Perseids, the most popular meteor showers of the year, will reach their peak late Sunday night, and especially very early Monday as the moon politely gets out of the way.

“Don’t pass on this year’s Perseid display,” advises Bob Lunsford with the American Meteor Society, “because the 2025 display will be spoiled by a bright gibbous moon, which will be in the sky most of the night.” Besides, the annual Perseid numbers are slowly declining.

The Perseids, named because they appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, have been shooting across the sky for the last two weeks. But their numbers have been gradually increasing in recent nights, and this year, the moon will be getting out of the way, while the skies will be clear and relatively vapor free, just in time for the peak.

If you’re up for it, the very best time would be very late Sunday night and early Monday when as many as 50 of the cosmic fireflies an hour would be visible under ideal dark-sky conditions, said Lunsford.

Cut that in half under suburban skies, he said. And if you plan to watch them in Center City, you might consider staying in bed.

Granted, around here, it’s a challenge to find an ideal dark spot, but you’ll want to get as far away from the lights as possible.

One of the best vantage points in the region is French Creek State Park. It will be wide open all night and admission absolutely free.

The park straddles the border of Chester and Berks Counties, has long been a popular destination for sky enthusiasts, and stays open at night. The skywatchers typically gather at the Hopewell Lake parking lot. Park phone number is 610-582-9680.

Another option is Nockamixon State Park, where the Bucks-Mont Astronomy Club will be hosting a program Saturday night starting at 8 in which participants actually can listen for meteors via https://www.livemeteors.com/.

Bucks-Mont’s Dwight Dulsky said that while the club is aware this isn’t the absolute peak time, “the park wanted to schedule then.”

The moon will be cooperating, setting at 10:48 p.m. Saturday, and at 11:12 p.m. on Sunday.

Seeing a few brighter “fireballs” isn’t out of the question, given the sheer quantity of the meteors, and they can be quite a spectacle, said Dulsky.

“Your fast meteors such as the Perseids produce color by ‘exciting’ the atmospheric elements such as oxygen and nitrogen as it passes through the air,” he said.

The meteors can appear anywhere and everywhere in the sky.

By the way, you also can watch the Perseids via livestream on space.com, beginning at 9 p.m. Philly time Sunday, with another show the following night at the same time.

The short answer is cosmic debris, left over from the visitations of the Swift-Tuttle comet to our neighborhood of the solar system.

It’s not exactly a frequent visitor by our standards.

The comet makes its closest approaches to Earth every 133 years as it orbits the sun, leaving behind a generous harvest of mostly tiny, cometic debris. In late summer, our planet encounters the particles, some of which enter our atmosphere and are transformed to glowing meteors as they become super-heated.

The last close approach was in 1992 — a banner year for the meteors because the comet was depositing a fresh supply of debris — and our next debris replenishment is due in 2125.

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In the meantime, the meteor numbers are decreasing, said Scott Engle, assistant professor of astrophysics and planetary science at Villanova University, but the show will go on.

While it is impossible to come up with a precise number, he estimates that even when the comet is farthest away (2058), he expects that peak nights still should feature an average of one every couple of minutes.

As Engle observed, night sky conditions around here aren’t going to be getting better in the foreseeable future.

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And Perseid watching doesn’t entail a whole lot of effort. It doesn’t require any special optical equipment and, he said, “it’ll only take a couple minutes for your eyes to really adjust. And some of the fireballs can streak across the sky in a pretty dramatic fashion.”

On a higher level, he added, “I think there’s always something special about directly experiencing or witnessing cosmic events like this, so most people will walk away really happy that they took the time.”