Dazzling meteor shower to light up skies this weekend

Stargazers in Vietnam will get the opportunity to see the Perseid meteor shower, the largest one this year, between Saturday midnight and early Sunday morning.

A multiple exposure picture taken in the early hours of August 11^th, 2013 shows a Perseids meteor shower in the sky. (AFP Photo)

The Perseid is made of tiny pieces of a comet called Swift-Tuttle. It can be seen every year when Earth passes through a cloud of the comet’s debris. The debris is bits of ice and dust in varying sizes, from as small as a grain of sand to about as big as a pea.

The Perseid meteor shower is expected to peak on Saturday midnight, this means that stargazers will be able to see maximum of the shower in the shortest amount of time. At that point, astronomers are expected to be able to see up to 80 shooting stars an hour.

Unlike other cosmic events, to catch the shooting stars, people will not need a telescope, binoculars or any other kind of special equipment.

The best way to see it would be to watch the sky from a wide, open space - away from trees and tall buildings. The shooting stars will appear to come from the direction of the Perseus constellation in the north-eastern part of the sky./.

VNF/VNS