How to Watch 2016 Perseid Meteor Shower in Wisconsin

WISCONSIN -- If you can catch only one meteor shower in 2016, make it the Perseids, which often produce 50 to 100 fast, bright meteors per hour during the peak and are known for persistent trains.

This year, however, experts are saying that the 2016 Perseid Meteor Shower will have an "outburst" which could yield between 150-200 meteors per hour.

How to Watch in Wisconsin - advice from the Spacedex Meteor Shower Guide:

Optimal Time: 11:00pm - 04:30am (CST)
Peak: Night of Aug 12 to morning of Aug 13
Start: August 1st, before August 10th's full moon, for maximum visibility.

Find a spot with an unobstructed view - the less city lights the better. Face half-way up toward the northeastern portion of the sky. Looking northeast, you will have the constellation of Perseus, the radiant of the Perseids shower, within your field of view.

Looking directly up at the sky or into the radiant is not recommended since this is just the point in which they appear to come from. You are more likely to see a trail when looking slightly away from this point. Looking half-way up into the sky will lead to the best show in the house.

Why is it called Perseid?

The Perseid Meteor Shower is named after the constellation of Perseus, because the meteors appear to radiate from that constellation's location in the night sky.

Why does this meteor shower happen?

The Comet Swift-Tuttle is the largest natural object (next to the Moon) to pass by the Earth. It's about 16 miles wide. To give you a sense of size, that's about the same distance from Downtown Milwaukee to Brookfield or Downtown Minneapolis to Eden Prairie.

But I digress.

The comet passed by Earth last in the early 90s, but given that comets are messy, messy objects, they leave a trail of debris along their path.
As Earth orbits around the sun, it actually orbits into the path of that debris once each year. It would be like riding your bike around the block and getting wet from that lawn sprinkler at the corner house each time you pass by.

Are they meteors?

Actually, no. They're tiny pieces of comet debris - some of which are no larger than a grain of sand. They're incredibly fast, and can travel up to 37 miles per second. Despite their small size, these "meteroids" encounter a lot of friction as they enter Earth's upper atmosphere and burn bright colors as they reach their meteoric end.

Outburst, eh?

Yep. When the comet passed by Jupiter earlier this year, the gravitational pull of the solar system's largest planet caused all of the comet debris to clump together and line up with Earth's path.

You’ll have to get up early to catch them, though, because a bright moon will intrude with viewing in the evening hours.

Image Credit: NASA