Perseid meteor shower should be twice as spectacular this year - CNET

Shooting-star superfans are in for a special treat this month as the Perseid meteor shower -- one of the best annual opportunities to spot bright, fast bits of space rock buing up in the night sky -- is expected to be twice as nice as normal.

"Forecasters are predicting a Perseid outburst this year with double normal rates on the night of August 11-12," Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office said in a statement. "Under perfect conditions, rates could soar to 200 meteors per hour."

You might think of the Perseids as arriving at Earth every August, but really we're the ones visiting their home turf each year. Our planet ventures through trails of debris left over from comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years.

Dazzling shots of the 2015 Perseid meteor...

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Usually we just kind of graze up against the edge of the ancient comet's debris stream, according to NASA. But this could be the rare year where Jupiter's gravity tugs that stream a little closer, allowing our planet to plow right through the middle of it, where there's more junk and we see more meteors as a result.