It’s once again time for the Perseids, one of the best meteor showers of the year

Full moon will make it more challenging but not impossible to catch a ‘shooting star’.

Each August, Earth plows through a thick trail of debris left over from a passing comet. The result: A spectacular night of meteors lighting up the sky.

One of the best and most anticipated meteor showers of the year is the Perseids, which takes place from mid-July to the end of August. But peak viewing — where you’ll get a chance to see the most meteors — falls on the night of Aug. 12-13 this year, according to the International Meteor Organization.

That’s when Earth moves through the thickest part of the debris left over from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, with tiny pieces of particles burning up in our atmosphere at 59 km/s.

Swift-Tuttle, which was first discovered in 1862 independently by both Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle, makes an orbit of the sun every 133 years. The last time it was in our solar system was in 1992. Still, from all those trips around the sun, it’s left behind plenty of debris.

Some of this debris can be bigger than the normal grain-like particles and can create beautiful bolides, or bright fireballs that light up the sky.

How to see the meteors

Though the Perseids rarely disappoint, there is one thing to contend with this year that may hamper your viewing delight: the full moon.

With the moon lighting up the sky, that means that only the brightest of meteors will be visible. Fortunately, many Perseids tend to be quite bright anyway.

The Perseids are given their name for the constellation — Perseus. This is the point in the sky from which they seem to appear, called the radiant.

While some people like to look in the direction of the constellation, which rises in the northeast, it limits the number of meteors that can be seen, since they will have shorter tails. To see longer meteors (ie., with long tails), you don’t need to look directly up, but at more of an angle.

And the best thing about meteor showers is that you don’t need a telescope or binoculars, just your own eyes.

You can also keep an eye out for “earthgrazers,” meteors that skim Earth’s atmosphere and, as a result, leave a long trail behind them.

These are best viewed early in the night, when the sky is dark and the radiant is low in the east. They will be moving roughly from north to south.

To increase your chances of catching some bright meteors, you could head out ahead of the peak night of Aug. 12, or even in the days after, when the moon won’t be entirely full. Try to keep the moon behind you when stargazing to block out its glare.