Where and when you can still watch the year’s brightest shower before it ends next week

Although the Perseid meteor shower peaked late Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning, stargazers can still catch a glimpse of the meteors until Aug. 23.

The Perseid shower, which has been active since July 17, is “considered the best meteor shower of the year,” according to NASA. At its peak, viewers could see up to 100 streaks every hour, which is high compared to the average peak meteor shower rate of at least 15 meteors every hour.

Viewers who missed the peak can still see some of the action over the next few nights if they watch in a dark area away from city lights and look to the northeast before sunrise. To find the best time to see the Perseid shower where you are, check the Global Meteor Network’s meteor-tracker.

What to know about the Perseid meteor shower

Perseid meteors leave particularly long, bright trails as they fall through Earth’s atmosphere, with about 50 to 100 streaks expected to be visible every hour at their peak.

The Perseid shower comes from comet 109/Swift-Tuttle, a comet that takes 133 years to orbit the sun and crosses the Earth’s orbit once a year. The shower’s name comes from the constellation Perseus, NASA explains, which is the point in the sky from which the Perseid meteors are visibly falling.

What is a meteor shower?

Meteoroids are falling pieces of debris from comets and asteroids that, as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, turn into meteors, according to NASA. As meteors vaporize, their trails are visible from Earth, which is what we call “shooting stars” or “falling stars.”

A meteor shower is what happens when there’s a higher-than-usual number of meteors falling across the sky in a short period of time. Meteor showers happen at certain times throughout the year because comets also orbit the sun, so when a comet and the Earth cross paths, the Earth encounters a lot of the comet’s debris, or meteoroids.