The skies over Schuylkill County will be perfect this weekend to view one of the most exciting meteor showers of the year.
According to NASA, the Perseid meteor shower comes around every year from early- to mid-August as Earth passes through a cloud of dust sputtered off a comet. The meteoroids will hit the atmosphere at 132,000 mph to produce the annual light show.
"The Swift-Tuttle comet is the source of the meteor shower," Thomas J. Guzick, who teaches an astronomy class at Pottsville Area High School, said Thursday. "It takes the earth about a week to go through the area of space that the Swift-Tuttle comet has passed. The earth will be in this area from Aug. 9 to 14 this year."
Guzick said meteor showers are named for the constellation where the radiant is found, or the point in space that the meteors appear to be coming from. In this case, the shower is in the northern sky constellation of Perseus.
While it's not unusual to see a fireball every few hours as random meteoroids constantly hit the upper atmosphere, the high frequency is what makes this weekend special.
"One of the better showers of the year, expecting 60 meteors an hour, or one a minute," Guzick said. "But please realize meteor showers are very unpredictable. Count also depends on light pollution and weather conditions."
Aaron Tybursky, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, State College, said lingering storms are possible tonight but the skies will clear up Saturday and Sunday with temperatures in the upper 70s. The next chance of rain will be Tuesday.
"It looks like a nice and very pleasant weekend, perfect for the meteor shower," Tybursky said.
The peak of the shower is expected to be Tuesday night.
"Morning is the best time to view due to the fact that the earth is spinning away from the radiant in the evening and spinning into the radiant in the morning," Guzick said. "So you do not have to wait till the 12th to look but that should be the best night."
Perseid meteor shower was recently declared the "fireball champion" by NASA.
The term "fireball" is used to describe a meteor at least as bright as the planets Jupiter or Venus and can be seen on any given night, according to NASA.
Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office and his team have used a network of meteor cameras across the southern parts of the country to track fireball activity since 2008.
"We have found that one meteor shower produces more fireballs than any other," Cooke said in a press release. "It's the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on Aug. 12 and 13."
Cooke said the Perseid probably has more fireballs because of the size of the parent comet.
"Comet Swift-Tuttle has a huge nucleus - about 26 kilometers in diameter," Cooke said. "Most other comets are much smaller, with nuclei only a few kilometers across. As a result, Comet Swift-Tuttle produces a large number of meteoroids, many of which are large enough to produce fireballs."
Cooke said the highest concentration of fireballs will be Monday and Tuesday between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m.
"Get away from city lights," Cooke said. "While fireballs can be seen from urban areas, the much greater number of faint Perseids is visible only from the countryside."