The dazzling Perseid meteor shower is happening over Vancouver Island TONIGHT

It’s almost time for the brightest, most prominent meteor shower of the year!

The Perseid meteor shower will be lighting up the night sky once again on the night of August 12th and 13th.

But this year, NASA says the usually spectacular stellar show may be out-shined by a close-to-full moon during their peak.

See also:

• This meteor shower is about to light up Vancouver Island skies next week
• Here’s what the last supermoon of 2019 looked like in Greater Victoria (PHOTOS)
• 19 photos of last night’s spectacular Super Blood Wolf Moon Total Lunar Eclipse

“The best known meteors of the year, the Perseids, are back. But…this year’s shower will have to contend with a bright Moon on the peak nights. Still, you could see a dozen or more meteors per hour, including the occasional very bright meteor, also called a fireball,” writes the space agency.

This year, the best time to view the show will be in the last hours before dawn on the mornings of August 12th and 13th.

Because the moon will nearly be full, the best chance to see the meteors will be when the moon is low in the west, or the brief period after it sets.

Visibility may be further limited by clouds since, as of the time of publication, cloudy nights are in the forecast for Victoria on August 12th and 13th.

“For the best meteor watching, face toward the east and look up. The Perseids generally appear to radiate from a point here, a bit to the left of the Pleiades star cluster, but they can appear pretty much anywhere on the sky,” says NASA.

Happy stargazing!