The Perseid summer light show will reach its peak across South Carolina Wednesday night into the early hours of Thursday morning.
The meteor shower's peak will coincide with a perfectly timed new moon. The lack of moonlight interference will allow for some of the best stargazing conditions in years.
South Carolinians may see a few meteors around 10 p.m. as the sky gets fully dark but the show will get dramatically better after midnight, with prime viewing between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.
The Perseids can produce 50 to 100 meteors per hour. Thirty to 50 meteors per hour could be seen by the naked eye from rural areas.
Random meteors are visible in dark skies on any given night. Meteor showers tend to put on dazzling celestial shows and happen at predictable times every year when the Earth plows through trails of debris left behind by comets and, sometimes, asteroids. Those remnants collide with Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds, producing streaks of light known as shooting stars.
The Perseids are debris from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, an icy ball that orbits the sun every 133 years and isn't scheduled for a return visit until 2125. Observations of this meteor shower date back over 2,000 years.