Simon's Blog - Meteor Spotting

If you're thinking "well that's a nice picture of the night sky that Tom took" you're absolutely right.

However if you take a closer look...

...you can actually see a meteor on it.

It's that line on the top right by the way and if you fancy a bit of night sky watching and you're quite lucky, you could see plenty of bright lights hurtling through the sky as the Perseid Meteor Shower will be at it's peak over the next couple of nights.

The best time to see them is between 11 pm and 4.30 am and with a decent bit of clear sky, you could see between 15 and 30 meteors in an hour. The annual display is caused by the Earth passing through the rocky debris left behind by the Swift-Tuttle Comet.

Tim Burgess from Newbury tweeted this picture of the Milky Way and up in the top left of the frame he caught a Perseid too.

So good luck with your spotting and if you're clever enough to take a photo please email me meridianweather@itv.com or send me a tweet to SimonParkinITV if you're on Twitter.

Here's an incredible image that our old friend Greg Parker from the New Forest Observatory took eight and a three quarter hours to get.

Of course I'm sure you know it's the North America/Pelican nebula region of Cygnus.

And on an another image he took of it...

...he also caught the International Space Station passing overhead. It's that line bottom left by the way and it'll be viewable quite a lot over the next few nights and you can find out when and where to look by clicking here.