Five ways to make the most of the Perseid meteor shower
5x5 We’re due a bumper crop of meteors from the annual Perseid shower over the next couple of nights, but that doesn’t mean you can just pop your head out of the window to see a hail of trails. Look up towards the North East and follow these tips to maximise your chances of annoying friends by screaming “Did you see that one?”
1 Get out of town If you live in an urban area, then head for the hills, or ideally, just over the hills, where you can escape the skyglow caused by our overlit towns and cities. If you can’t get away, find a park or open space where trees or unlit buildings hide the horizon for a few degrees from the ground, and you’ll see a huge difference. The South Downs are an easy drive from London, but the best English results will be in Northumberland, the Lake District. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be spoiled for choice, but you can look up good sites with the dark skies maps at the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England’s Night Blight site and Dark Sky Discovery.
2 Midnight is the magic hour It should go without saying, but the darkest time of night is always the best time to look at the night sky. The Moon sets around midnight and the August twilight will be well gone, even in the far North. It’s not so easy if you’re trying to spot meteors with the kids, but you can always go out for a second look when they’re tucked in.
3 Take it easy Your eyes will need 15–20 minutes to adapt to the darkness, so grab a camping chair or roll out a camping rug and chill. Meteor-watching is also different from star-gazing because you need to relax your eyes and take in as much of the sky as you can, instead of focusing on one point through the eyepiece of a telescope.
4 No phones, no campfires It’s no good escaping the skyglow and adapting your eyes if you throw it all away to squint at Facebook or snap a selfie. Bright blue-white mobile phone screens will destroy your night vision in a flash, and the less said about camera flashes, the better. The same goes for campfires, unless your has died down to a warm red glow. If you must get your phone out, Google Sky Map has a night vision mode (but beware, it doesn’t dim other apps), or the Lux app for Android has an astronomer mode which puts a red filter over everything (iPhone users will have to do your own research).
5 Don’t forget the stars and planets Your eyes are dark-adapted now, so you might as well enjoy the rest of the night sky. Congratulations if you brought a pair of binoculars, but don’t worry if you only packed wine. Look west and low on the horizon in the early evening at around 9.30pm, and you should see both Mars and Saturn. A telescope or binoculars with 50x magnification or better will even show you the rings of Saturn. For stars and constellations, the Society for Popular Astronomy has an accessible guide to the August night sky.
