This is an e-mail I recevied - Glad I didn't miss this annual event this year! - Perseids Meteor Shower

Sky & Telescope
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>Dark Nights for This Year's Perseids
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>Mark your calendar for Sunday  night, August 12-13.
>By ALAN MACROBERT
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>This year the new moon of August  comes on Sunday, the 12th, perfectly
>timed
>to bring dark, moonless nights around  the peak of the Perseid meteor
>shower.
>Moreover, Earth should pass through the  shower's richest part around 1AM
>ET
>on August 13th -- so North Americans and  western Europeans should have the
>best seats in the house.
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>Stargazers could see more than one meteor per minute in s
>with very dark skies.
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>The  Perseids are bits of space debris that were shed by Comet Swift-Tuttle
>in past  centuries and remain traveling more or less along the comet's
>130-year
>orbit  around the sun. The particles range in size from sand grains to
>pebbles, and  they have the consistency of dry dirt. As it orbits the sun,
>Earth
>passes  through this thin "river of rubble" every year in mid-August. Each
>meteoroid  rips into our upper atmosphere at 37 miles per second, creating
>an
>incandescent  trail of shocked, ionized air. This hot trail, not the tiny
>meteoroid
>itself, is  what you see.
>
>The  Perseids are one of the two strongest, most dependable annual meteor
>showers  (the Geminids of December are the other; here's a _list_
>(http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/meteors/Meteor_Showers_in_nbsp_2007.
html)
>of all the best ones). The  grand Perseid displays of the 1990s seem to be
>well and truly over, so this year  under a dark sky you might see "only" 60

>to 90
>Perseids per hour between  midnight and dawn. Light pollution cuts down the
>numbers, but the most  spectacular streakers always shine through.
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>Sky  Chart for August 12
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>These meteors can flash into view anywhere in your sky, but all of  them
>(if
>you trace their paths back far enough) appear to diverge from a spot in
>northern Perseus near Cassiopeia. This is the shower's radiant point. The 
>radiant
>is an effect of perspective; the particles are actually traveling in 
>parallel
>through space. Meteors you see near the radiant look slow and short 
>because
>they're coming at you almost head-on. Those far from the radiant appear
>longer and faster, because you see them broadside.
>
>In early evening the radiant is low in the north-northeast, so  Perseids
>graze into the atmosphere over your part of the world at a low angle  and
>you
>don't see very many. As the night grows late, the radiant rises higher  in
>the
>northeast, the meteors arrive more nearly straight down, so you see them 
>in
>greater numbers. By the first glimmer of dawn the radiant is quite high, 
>about
>60° up for observers at mid-northern latitudes.
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>How to Watch
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>Find a spot with an open sky view and no glary lights. Bundle up in 
>blankets
>or a sleeping bag, both for warmth and mosquito shielding (and don't 
>forget
>the repellent). Lie back, gaze into the stars, and be patient. The 
>direction
>to watch is wherever your sky is darkest, usually straight up. That's  all
>there is to it.
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>And don't forget that the shower lasts more than one night. Rates are 
>about
>a quarter to half the peak for one or two nights before and after. In 
>fact,
>the shower lasts about two weeks and stragglers have been recorded as late 
>as
>August 24th.
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>Also, not all meteors you'll see are Perseids! In addition to  occasional
>random, sporadic meteors, the weaker Delta Aquarid shower is also  active
>during
>Perseid season. The Delta Aquarids are slower, often yellower and  fly away
>from a radiant in eastern Aquarius.
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>Sky & Telescope's website offers more tips on _watching meteors_
>(http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/meteors/3304061.html) 
>and _what causes
>them._
>(http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/meteors/3304046.html)
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