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Bright Moonlight Could Interfere with View of Perseids’ Peak [1]
['Beth Ridgeway']
Date: 2025-08-08
Bright Moonlight Could Interfere with View of Perseids’ Peak
A meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid and Alpha Capricornids meteor showers, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025, in Spruce Knob, West Virginia. NASA/Bill Ingalls
By Jessica Barnett
The Perseids remain one of the best meteor showers each year, but stargazers will have to deal with another bright object in the sky obscuring their view as the shower reaches its max in 2025.
A waning gibbous Moon will brighten the skies as it rises on the nights of Aug. 12 and 13, when Perseids are most active this year. Skywatchers in the Northern hemisphere could see fewer than half the number of meteors usually seen on a dark summer night during the shower’s peak.
“The average person under dark skies could see somewhere between 40 and 50 Perseids per hour,” said Bill Cooke, lead for NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office. “Instead, you’re probably going to see 10 to 20 per hour or fewer, and that’s because we have a bright Moon in the sky washing out the fainter meteors.”
That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to improve your viewing opportunity, however.
Getting the best look
Though Perseids show up throughout the nighttime hours, the best chance to see them will be between midnight and dawn – or, even more specifically, 2 and 3 a.m. local time.
“You’re not going to see Perseids around suppertime,” Cooke said. “You’re going to have to go out later.”
When you do venture out, aim for a safe, rural spot with a wide view of the sky. If you can see plenty of stars, chances are, you’ll see Perseids – but remember Cooke’s other piece of advice: “Look anywhere but at the Moon.”
A composite image of meteors seen Aug. 7, 2025, from NASA’s Automated Lunar and Meteor Observatory at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA
Why we have Perseids
The Perseid meteor shower may be an annual event for Earth, but the comet responsible for the meteors hasn’t been near our planet in decades. The meteors are debris from the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which last visited our region of the solar system in 1992.
As the Earth makes it way around the Sun, it passes through the debris trail left by the comet. These space remnants collide with our atmosphere and disintegrate to create fiery and colorful streaks in the sky.
Though the meteors are part of a comet’s debris trail, they seem to radiate outward from the Perseus constellation. This is how the meteor shower got its name: Perseids.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/watch-the-skies/2025/08/08/bright-moonlight-could-interfere-with-view-of-perseids-peak/
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