For amateur astronomers and night owls it is worth looking at the starry sky in the coming nights.
Because like every year at this time, the meteor swarm of the Perseids is approaching.
If you look east after midnight, you could see a few dozen shooting stars light up in the sky every hour with the naked eye.
Manfred Lindinger
Editor in the department "Nature and Science".
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However, you will probably only be able to catch the brightest meteors.
Meteorologists continue to predict mild evenings and a cloudless sky for large parts of Germany.
However, our satellite, which shines in its full size as a full moon this Friday and is in the sky all night, will make it difficult to see.
Peak early Saturday morning
The Perseids will reach their theoretical peak around three o'clock early on Saturday morning, writes the Association of Star Friends in Germany on its website.
But the nights afterwards are also worth looking at the nocturnal firmament.
The summer shooting stars get their name from the constellation Perseus, because they seem to come from this direction.
In fact, the meteors come from the environment of the earth.
On its orbit around the sun, our planet crosses the orbit of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle every year between mid-July and late August.
The earth encounters the cosmic dust trail left behind by the tail star, which recurs every 133 years and was discovered in 1862.
The particles, which are only a few millimeters in size, penetrate the earth's atmosphere at an average speed of around 60 kilometers per second.
At an altitude of 80 to 100 kilometers, they then collide with the air molecules, which then begin to glow.
So the shooting stars are not the burning dust particles themselves, but the glow of the ionized air molecules.
The meteors usually do not reach the surface of the earth.
According to written tradition, the Perseids were first observed in China around 36 BC.
After that, there were reports from Japan and Korea.
In Europe, the first known observation of the meteor swarm dates back to 811.
Incidentally, the August meteors are popularly called “Laurentius tears”.
The name commemorates Saint Laurentius, who was martyred on August 10, 258 under the rule of the Roman Emperor Valerian.
Ever since then, fiery tears are said to have rained down from the sky that day.
The burned-off end of the candle wick used to be called the snuff.
It had to be carefully cut off – cleaned – if the candle didn't soot.
According to old folk belief, shooting stars fall from the sky when the stars are cleaning themselves.
You don't need any special equipment for observing.
A deck chair and a good all-round view without artificial light are sufficient.