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Ephemeris: 08/11/2025 – The best times to see the Perseid meteor shower

August 11, 2025 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Monday, August 11th. Today the Sun will be up for 14 hours and 13 minutes, setting at 8:54, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:42. The Moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 10:06 this evening.

Tonight’s most interesting astronomical events will occur tomorrow morning. The Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak tomorrow afternoon, so tomorrow morning and Wednesday morning will be about the best times to see the meteors, except that the bright Moon is going to interfere. So only the brightest meteors will be visible. Bonus: in morning twilight tomorrow the planets Venus and Jupiter will be in conjunction, meaning they’ll be at their closest appearance to each other by a little bit less than twice the width of the Moon apart. Early risers may have been noticing that Venus and Jupiter will have been slowly approaching each other, with Jupiter below and left of Venus. Tomorrow morning, Jupiter will pass just above Venus.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

My best Perseid photo. From the 1970's.
My best Perseid photo. From the 1970’s. The other streaks are stars due to the earth’s rotation during the time exposure of the stationary camera. The camera was aimed near the radiant, where the meteoric streaks are shorter because they are coming almost right at us. This one would be visible on the brightest moonlit night.

Categories: Conjunction, Ephemeris Program, Meteor Shower, Naked-eye planets, Observing Tags: , ,