(SPACE.com) -- A fine display of shooting stars is underway and peaks overnight Wednesday into early Thursday morning. Astronomers expect the 2004 Perseid meteor shower to be one of the best versions of the annual event in several years.
Watching meteors requires no special gear -- telescopes and binoculars are of no use. So anyone in the Northern Hemisphere with clear skies could see some "shooting stars."
Seasoned meteor watchers suggest finding a dark location away from city and suburban lights, if possible. Some brighter streaks will be visible from cities but urban lighting will drown out the bulk of them. Take a blanket or lounge chair so you can lie back and scan as much of the sky as possible, experts say.
Perseids can appear anywhere in the sky, but if traced back they will appear to emanate from a point in the constellation Perseus, which rises in late evening in the East and is high overhead in the wee hours before sunrise.
When to watch
During peak times, and for moments or perhaps hours at a stretch, the Perseids could generate about a meteor every minute for viewers in dark locations. Sporadic brief bursts of a few in a single minute sometimes occur.
A good display could begin Wednesday night starting around 9 p.m. local time for those with dark skies. Because of the celestial mechanics involved, a few "earthgrazing" meteors could emerge from near the horizon in these late evening hours and race horizontally across the sky.
The hours from 2 a.m. until dawn local time Thursday will be the best. That is when the side of Earth you stand on faces the oncoming stream of debris that creates the shower. Like an ornament on the hood of a car, a predawn viewer sees bits of ancient comet dust being scooped up by Earth's atmosphere as the planet plunges on its orbital course around the sun. Nighttime meteors have to catch up to the planet.
As a bonus Thursday, a thin crescent Moon will appear near Venus in the eastern predawn sky. Venus is unmistakably bright, outshining all other stars and planets right now.
Unlike last year when a Full Moon outshone many Perseids, this year the thin Moon won't be much of a hindrance.
beli. you have that beautiful southern hemisphere sky that i long to see someday.
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i think i'm gonna go out for a while and try to take some pics. i was gonna go to bed early and try to get up around 2am but screw it im going out now!!! 
