About Us| Why Perseides as a name? | Perseides Defined Perseides (pûr´ se-ids) is an annual meteor shower seen from the earth in the month of August. The Perseides meteor shower occurs every year from about July 23 to August 22. The shower’s maximum, or time when the highest number of meteors fall per hour, is usually August 12 or 13. The rate at which the Perseides fall is determined by where Comet Swift-Tuttle is in relation to the earth when the earth crosses Swift-Tuttle’s orbit. Repeated passes of the comet have left a ring of debris throughout the comet’s orbit, and when this debris enters the earth’s atmosphere, a meteor shower is created. The concentration of meteors is higher when the comet is near the earth. In the early 20th century, peak rates were as low as 4 meteors per hour. When Swift-Tuttle was close to the earth in 1993, however, the Perseids’ peak rate was between 200 and 500 meteors per hour. The Perseides meteors occur all over the sky, but their paths can be traced back to one spot, called the radiant. The radiant of the Perseides shower is near Eta Persei, a star near the north end of the constellation Perseus. The first record of the Perseides meteor shower comes from a Chinese manuscript written in AD 36. In 1835 Belgian astronomer Adolphe Quételet became the first person to record the periodic nature of the shower. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli linked the Perseids to Swift-Tuttle in 1866. Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2005.