Tips for how to see a stunning meteor as the Perseid meteor shower continues
Even if you missed the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, you still have a chance to witness something in the night sky that could shake you to your core, according to Jackie Faherty.
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00:00The northern lights shined bright over several states across the U.S., and if you didn't get to
00:06witness the spectacle, Jackie Faraday with the American Museum of Natural History joins us now
00:13to tell us how you might still be able to catch the show. And thanks for joining us, Miss Faraday,
00:20as we go through here on AccuWeather Early. What makes the Perseid meteor shower one of the more
00:26popular meteor showers of the year? Yeah, I think that the the time of year should speak for itself.
00:34So I think part of why it's so popular is because it happens during the summer, and the summer is
00:40just a time people want to be outside. The weather is warm, but it also is one of the meteor showers
00:46that happens to have the highest number of potential meteors that you can see in a given
00:52night under a dark sky. So if you have perfect conditions, which is okay, let's just all be honest,
00:58it's very hard to get perfect conditions. This is AccuWeather. I'm sure you're not going to say
01:02we're going to have perfect, perfect, perfect weather for the next couple of days, but if you did,
01:06you could see between 60 to 100 of these fireballs an hour, which is pretty spectacular.
01:13You don't usually get that number because there'll be clouds or there's water vapor that kind of
01:18makes things not look as bright, so it's never perfect. I love that. That's so exciting. Now, this
01:24weekend was just the peak, the best chance to see the show, but is there still more opportunities to
01:30watch out for? Yeah, so the way meteor showers work is that what's happening right now is the
01:38earth, as it's traveling on its path around the sun, it takes it 365 and a quarter days to get
01:44around the sun. It runs into debris that's left over from when other stuff was in the area, and
01:52right now what the earth is passing through is the debris from a comet called Swift Tuttle, and
02:00it takes it a while to pass through the debris, but it has like a core density of debris that it's
02:07passed through, and that's what we call the peak of a meteor shower, and that happened over the weekend
02:13into yesterday, so August 10th to really right now it's kind of ending through the highest density
02:20part of the debris from this comet, but we keep passing through it. It just gets less and
02:27less and less dense until we're out of it, all the way until August 24th, so there's plenty of time
02:34for people. It's summer. Go outside. Look at the sky. It'll be fun, I promise, and even if you see one,
02:42all you need is one to just like shake you to the core, so one will get you everything.
02:49One will get you everything. That's a great line. All right, what are some tips for finding the best
02:54of viewing locations to watch the Perseid meteor shower? This is why I love meteor showers, because
03:00I live in New York City. I'm in Harlem, and there's a lot of light pollution where I live,
03:06but I have seen the best meteor showers, and the reason is that all you need to make sure
03:13that you're in an ample, really good watching site is to be able to see a lot of the sky,
03:19so you don't want to limit yourself. If you're in the darkest, darkest spot, but you're in a forest,
03:24and all you can see is up for the little portion of the sky, that's a terrible place to be. You need
03:29as much real estate on the sky as you can get, and then light pollution will make it so you can't
03:36see the fainter ones, but the one that's going to shake you to the core is going to be a bright one,
03:41and you're not going to miss it. You don't miss it from New York City, so find yourself a spot,
03:46a clearing where there's tons of the sky that you can see. In cities, I go to rooftops. Rooftops
03:54are great places to go. Also, in someplace like New York City, you can go to the water,
03:59because once you get to the water, you usually get a pretty long field of view, but big clearings and
04:04parks are really good for this, and then the main thing, the main thing, people, that I tell
04:10everybody with meteor showers, this is the most important thing you can bring with you, and that
04:15is patience. You cannot expect instant gratification. You have to wait. Wait. Give it at least an hour
04:23of watching, minimum. Think of it like a Netflix movie. You're settling in, people.
04:28Get in there. Sit. Relax. Grab a glass of something, whatever, soda, wine, beer,
04:34whatever you like. Sit, relax, and let the sky entertain you. Wow. That just sounds spectacular,
04:42right? And it's great that we can even see some of the meteor shower, even if we are in a city,
04:48that we don't have to go to a dark sky spot. If you pack your patience, all you need is one to
04:52shake you to the core. I like that. I do like that. We can put that together and make it,
04:56put it on a t-shirt. Jackie Faraday, senior scientist and education manager at the American
05:01Museum of Natural History. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Good luck watching,
05:07everybody. Thank you.