Be sure to turn your eyes to the night sky, as brief flashes of light will streak through outer space on Tuesday night.
Two meteor showers will peak Tuesday night and into the following morning.
Cheers emerged from the utter awe of daylight turning black as the solar eclipse in 2024 caused humanity to gather and share in the rare spectacle.
But every summer in late July there are no special glasses needed, no path of totality to visit in order to witness another galactic wonder.
“Really all you need to do is go out and look up,” said Thaddeus LaCoursiere, planetarium production coordinator at the Bell Museum.
Two meteor showers, the Southern Delta Aquariid and Alpha Capricornid, are peaking this time of year.
Where do meteors come from?
“The original starting point for these meteors that are coming from a meteor shower are generally from comets,” LaCoursiere said.
Comets are made of rock, dust, and ice orbiting the sun. When they get close to the sun, they heat up and form a fiery tail.
“That material in the comet’s tail, it doesn’t go back to (the comet). It gets left behind,” LaCoursiere said.
That left over material floating in space are meteoroids.
What is a meteor shower?
A meteor shower is when the earth encounters floating meteoroids while it orbits the sun. As the earth passes through the debris, the meteoroids enter the earth’s atmosphere. They speed up and burn up, becoming meteors, also known as “shooting stars.”
“Meteor showers get their name from the area in the sky that they appear to come from,” LaCoursiere said.
The Alpha Capricornid meteor shower appears to come from the constellation Capricornus. The Southern Delta Aquariid appears to come from the constellation Aquarius.
What is the best way to view meteor showers?
LaCoursiere said to look away from their point of origin.
“If I can find Capricorn in the sky, I face away from it because those meteors are going to come from behind my head, they’re going to take a few seconds to enter the atmosphere, a few seconds to heat up, and so by the time we see them, we’re looking opposite from where they came from,” he said.
Other tips to better see a meteor shower:
- Find the darkest sky possible away from city lights
- Allow your eyes to adjust to the darkness for at least 20 minutes.
- Don’t look at your phone or another light source, otherwise the clock resets on adjusting your eyes.