The annual Perseid meteor shower, regarded by astronomers as one of the year’s most reliable displays, reaches its maximum during the night of Tuesday, Aug. 12, into the predawn hours of Wednesday across the Northern Hemisphere. Under dark, moon-free conditions the stream can yield as many as 100 meteors per hour, the result of Earth ploughing through dusty debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle. This year’s peak occurs under an 84 %-illuminated gibbous moon, and NASA estimates the glare will cut visible rates to roughly 10–20 meteors an hour for most observers. The agency advises finding a location far from urban light pollution, giving eyes at least 20 minutes to adapt to darkness and scanning a wide swath of sky rather than focusing on the Perseus constellation alone. The shower will continue, with diminishing intensity, until about Aug. 23 when the moonlight interference lessens. Skywatchers have additional incentives to look up. Venus and Jupiter form their closest pre-dawn pairing of the year on Aug. 12, appearing less than a degree apart low in the eastern sky. Beginning Aug. 16, the two bright planets will anchor a rarer six-planet ‘parade’ that also includes Mercury, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The alignment is expected to persist until Aug. 20 and will be the last opportunity to see so many planets grouped together before a similar event in February 2026.