Meteor Shower Peaks this Weekend

Coming up this weekend, you’ll have the chance to see a few meteors streaking across the night sky. In late July, the Delta Aquariids meteor shower peaks.

While it’s not the best meteor shower of the year, we could see 10-20 meteors per hour. With the moon nearing its new moon phase, viewing should be pretty ideal. Look in the southern sky for the constellation Aquariius. That’s where these meteors will be radiating from.

But it turns out some of the meteors that you see may not be Aquariiuds. There are actually 3 meteor showers peaking this weekend. The two big ones are the Delta Aquariiuds and the Perseids. The perseid meteor shower doesn’t peak until early to mid-August, but there will be a few of those flying across the night sky.

These meteors are solid rock burning up in the earth’s atmosphere. When this small rock is out in space, it’s classified as a meteoroid. When that meteoroid enters the earth’s atmosphere, it burns up due to friction. Almost all of these objects burn up completely in the atmosphere, however, should some of these objects reach the ground, it would then be classified as a meteorite. These meteorites are usually larger than meteoroids and meteors. Meteors tend to be the size of a rice krispy or even smaller.

After the Delta Aquariids, the Perseids peak the night of August 12, then there’s the Orionids October 21, the Leonids November 17, and the Geminids December 13.