Perseid meteor shower 2022 how to watch - Livescience.com

Stargazers can catch up to 20 meteors an hour this week, NASA says.

You may be able to see 10 - 20 meteors per hour during the peak, according to NASA – down from the 50 to 60 per hour visible on a non-full-moon year.

They occur each summer when our planet passes through the vast tail of debris dropped by the comet Swift-Tuttle, which made its last close approach to Earth in 1992.

As Earth swoops through the comet's icy, rocky leftovers, small bits of debris plunge through our atmosphere, heating up to more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 Celsius) and streaking through the sky at more than 100,000 mph (160,000 km/h), according to NASA.

While the Perseids last several weeks, the greatest spectacle begins when Earth passes through the densest part of comet Swift-Tuttle's debris cloud.

On a typical year, stargazers can expect to see about 60 meteors per hour during the shower's peak, according to NASA.

To give yourself the best shot at seeing the Perseids peak, Live Science's sister site Space.com recommends heading out to the darkest place you can find in the pre-dawn hours of Aug.

In 1862, two astronomers — Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle — independently discovered a massive near-Earth comet, now known as Comet Swift-Tuttle.

A few years later, another astronomer realized that this comet produced the Perseid meteor shower, according to NASA.

Comet Swift-Tuttle is massive — in fact, NASA says, it's the largest object known to repeatedly fly past Earth.

Astronomers have calculated the massive space rock's trajectory thousands of years into the future, and have found that the comet does not pose any threat of colliding with Earth on its current path.