Likely the best-known meteor shower of the year, the Perseids occur from late July through late August annually, typically peaking around Aug. 12-13. Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through the debris field left behind as a comet orbits the Sun. In the case of the Perseids, that comet is Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, discovered in 1862 by Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle. (But it was Giovanni Schiaparelli who, in 1865, identified the comet as the source of the meteor shower.) The Perseids have been known since antiquity, with the earliest known record made by Chinese astronomers in 36 C.E. Today, they are accessible to even the most casual of observers: They require no specialized equipment, can produce 50 to 100 meteors per hour under dark skies, and take place in North Hemisphere summer, when temperatures are comfortable for staying out at night. In 2011, astronaut Ron Garan even observed them from space. He snapped a shot from aboard the International Space Station of a Perseid falling over China, tweeting it out the next day.
