The Perseid meteor shower is expected to be visible from Saturday night through Tuesday morning—but from Sunday, August 12, 2007, between 5:00 pm EDT on the eastern coast of the United States (equivalently, 10:00 pm BST in England, or 2100 GMT) to just before sunrise on Monday morning, the meteor shower is expected to provide the maximum number of meteors per hour.

With good weather conditions, astronomers are predicting that up to 100 meteors per hour will be seen between Sunday night and Monday morning. When such a large number of meteors are seen, it is often called a meteor storm.

Look toward the northeastern part of the (hopefully) clear sky in the direction of the Perseus constellation. With a new Moon in the sky (no Moon will appear), the night sky will be especially dark to provide an even better view of the Perseids shower The further one is away from smog, lights, and other things that degrade the ability to see these shooting stars, the better.

These meteors, sometimes called shooting stars, are actually tiny pieces and fragments of space debris (some only the size of a grain of sand) that impinge on the Earth’s atmosphere then the orbit of the Earth intercepts the orbit of the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet.

Comet Swift-Tuttle, officially called 109P/Swift-Tuttle, was discovered independently by Lewis Swift and Horace Parnell Tuttle in 1862. It is the parent body for the Perseid meteor shower, which is one of the best known meteor showers, if not the most visible, to regularly be seen on the Earth.

When they hit the Earth’s atmosphere the meteors are traveling upwards to 32 miles (50 kilometers) per second. (As a comparison, the space shuttle orbits the Earth at about 17,500 miles per hour, or about 5 miles per second.)

They invariably vaporize in the Earth’s atmosphere before reaching the surface of the Earth. While burning up, the heat of friction from the atmosphere makes them extremely hot, which produces the streak of light that goes across the sky. Once in a while, a meteor survives to impact the Earth’s surface. When this happens, it is said a meteorite has landed.

For additional information on the Perseid meteor shower, read the iTWire article "2007 Perseid meteor shower is upon us".

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