Draconid meteor shower to peak soon

First, unlike other meteor showers, the Draconids peak in the early evening, not the early morning hours when most people are sleeping.

Draco’s up in the northern edge of the sky so if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere you’ll get the best view of the meteors. All of the debris that enters the upper atmosphere all burn up and never really hit the ground which produces the light show.

It’s been a good year for sky-watchers, and the Draconid meteor show this week is only making it better.

The mid-Atlantic Seacoast, Tennessee Valley, northern Plains and Rockies will have clear weather to view the meteors.

The constellation is the eighth largest in the entire sky, so large that it wraps itself around the North Star, Polaris.

A meteor shower takes place when our home planet passes through orbit of a comet. Draconid meteor showers do not last very long, some are just a few seconds long.

While a meteor looks spectacular in the sky, a shower like the Draconids does not have particles big enough to make it all the way down to Earth. That time, meteor rates reached about 600 per hour, as per report of NASA. However, bright moonlight at the time blocked out all but the brightest shooting stars.

The Draconids emanate from the head of the Draco the Dragon constellation.

Draco, the name of the constellation, derives from the Latin word for dragon.

While unlikely and rare, these massive upticks in meteor numbers can also occur when Earth slams into an uncharted but particularly dense part of the meteor stream left behind by the parent comet.

Best stargazing position: The Draconid meteor showers are visible to the naked eye.

No need for telescopes or even binoculars, as the individual streaks of light can appear over large spans of the overhead sky.

“They are either in outburst, with a fair number of meteors, or are so few that the casual observer would not notice them”, he told CBS News. Bring a reclining lawn chair, blankets and a few hot chocolate-and you’ll be set to make plenty of wishes.