As many as 20 'shooting stars' per hour will fall during the peak of the Delta Aquariid meteor shower this weekend, but August's Perseid meteor shower will be far more impressive.
The Southern Delta Aquariid meteor shower will peak this weekend, but it's just the first act of a multiweek"shooting star" season, with the best show still a few weeks away.
Though they're popularly called shooting"stars," these fast trails are crumbs of dust from asteroids or comets left in Earth's orbital path, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. As they strike Earth's atmosphere, they heat up and vaporize, resulting in streaks of light across the sky. Meteors from the Southern Delta Aquariid meteor shower — which travel at 25 miles per second — are known to be rather faint, and according to NASA, they're difficult to spot if the moon is visible. On the peak night, the moon will be just one day away from being full — bleaching the night sky and potentially making meteors hard to spot.
It's therefore possible to be out at night in late July and August and see shooting stars from both meteor showers. Although they can appear anywhere in the sky, the points from which the two showers radiate are very different. From the Northern Hemisphere, Delta Aquariid meteors appear to originate from the constellation Aquarius in the southern sky, while the Perseids appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus in the northeast.
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