The Southern Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids are reaching their peak this week. The Perseids, one of the best shows of the year, are also ramping up.
If you like to stay up late and stare at the night sky, get ready for a back-to-back feature: Two meteor showers are reaching their peak this week. They are the Southern Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids. And if those weren’t enough, a third event, the Perseids, is running in the background as it prepares for its mid-August peak, becoming the shower of the summer.
With all this activity, you could call it meteor season.
“Almost any night when it’s dark and clear, you’re going to see a good number of meteors,” Peter Brown, a physicist at Western University in Ontario.
When are the showers peaking?
Meteor showers are caused when Earth passes through the rubble trailing a comet or an asteroid as our planet swings around the sun. This debris, which can be as small as a grain of sand, leaves behind a glowing stream of light as it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Showers occur around the same time every year and can last for days or weeks, but there is only a small window when they are at their peak. Because Earth crosses the cometary debris fields that create the Southern Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids around the same time, the peak of the two showers overlap every year.
The Southern Delta Aquarids, which have been active since about July 18, reach their peak on the night between July 29 and 30. They are best seen in the Southern Hemisphere in the constellation Aquarius.
The Alpha Capricornids have been active since July 7. They peak between July 30 and 31 and are visible from both hemispheres in the constellation Capricorn.