This is one of the most anticipated astronomical events of the summer: the Perseids will light up the sky this Thursday evening and for three consecutive nights.
If you’ve never seen shooting stars in your life, now is the time. From this Thursday evening, it’s a real festival that will light up the nights with between 80 and 200 shooting stars per hour.
If they will last until August 24, the Perseids will never be as intense as during the nights of August 11, 12 and 13. Also called the “tears of Saint-Laurent”, these showers of shooting stars will only be fully appreciable in a sky that is as polluted as possible by public lighting.
Do not hesitate to move away from urban centers to really enjoy the most magical natural spectacle there is, even if, this year, it is the moon that risks playing the spoilsports. The supermoon and its exceptional luminosity indeed invite themselves at the same time as the highlight of the Perseids. The show may be a little disturbed.
As for the best time to observe this extraordinary phenomenon, it is generally closer to dawn, between 4 am and 5 am.
Note that if the Perseids take their name from the constellation Perseus, the shooting stars do not concentrate around the latter and can be seen everywhere in the sky.
