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A weekend of celestial fireworks is in store as Earth makes its annual rendezvous with the Perseid meteors.
At its peak on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, the meteor shower may produce 80-100 shooting stars an hour, although this year there is a risk that the bright moon will wash out the fainter meteors.
Meteors can appear anywhere, but sky-watchers will get the best view by looking to the north-east, where the sky will be darkest.
Claire Gilby, from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, London, said: "Unlike many astronomical objects, meteors are visible to the naked eye and observers need no special equipment to view them.
"Weather permitting, the sensitivity and wide field of view of the human eye are perfect for watching the Perseids. So, to see the Perseids, all you need to do is sit back and watch the night sky."
The Perseids are tiny particles, ranging in size from a grain of sand to a pea, shed long ago by the comet Swift-Tuttle.
Over the centuries the particles have spread along the comet's 130-year orbit.
Every mid-August, the Earth's own path round the Sun takes it through the particle stream. The grains hit the atmosphere at 37 miles per second and burn up, streaking across the sky in flashes of white light.
For a few years in the early 1990s, the Perseids performed spectacularly, generating outbursts of hundreds of meteors per hour although in recent years, the shower has not been so dramatic.
