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NASA News · August 12, 2026

APOD: 2026 August 12 – Perseids over a Little Planet

APOD: 2026 August 12 – Perseids over a Little Planet
Credit: Marcin Rosadziński© Marcin Rosadziński — all rights reserved by the owner; shown with creditFull-size image and original page at NASA News

From the source

It looks like a view from the Little Prince‘s planet. The featured image is a throwback to the 2024 Perseid meteor shower, surrounded in this projection by the Bieszczady Mountains in Poland. Visible in the sky is the arch of the Milky Way, along with several nebulas in red and over a hundred meteors pointing to the radiant. The Perseids are easily visible and quite popular in the Northern Hemisphere summer. (Watching meteor showers in the winter is less convenient for a good reason). This year they are expected to offer an even more dazzling spectacle than usual, because the peak coincides with a new moon. The 2026 Perseid meteor shower will peak tonight with as many as 50-100 meteors per hour, when the Earth’s path crosses through debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. Typically, the best times for seeing the meteors are between midnight and pre-dawn. You won’t need binoculars to see the meteors, but a lawn chair and a dark sky location help.

NASA Stream: August 12 Total Solar Eclipse. Tomorrow’s picture: pixels in space

From NASA News.

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