Depending on who you talk to, there are about eight decent meteor showers in any given year around Butler.

Without a doubt, the Perseid meteor shower this week is one of the very best of the year, and this time around it's extra special because there won't be any moonlight to wash the meteors out.

Of course, city and suburban light can also do a real number on your Perseid pleasures, although a few of the brighter "shooting stars" will still manage to shine above the dirge of light polluted heavens.

If at all possible, get out into the countryside if you're not already lucky enough to live there, and take in the Perseid show under a canopy of dark starry heavens.

It's a true summer pleasure and one I don't like to miss! With a sharp attentive eye you may see well more than 60 meteors an hour. And if you're with someone, maybe that special someone, and better yet with a small group, you may collectively see even more, maybe more than a hundred!

Just lie back on the ground or a reclining lawn chair, maybe bring some light blankets and a light jacket, and, of course, be ready with repellant for mosquitoes!

Most heavy duty summer star watchers will tell you, though, and it's been my experience as well, that mosquitoes don't bite as much once you're a couple hours past sunset.

A lot of the time they stop feeding on you completely, depending on how sweet they find you to taste!

The Perseid meteor shower peaks Thursday night and early Friday morning, although the viewing should be pretty good most of the week, even Friday night and Saturday morning if you want to take advantage of the start of the weekend.

The best time for viewing will be anytime from about midnight until the start of morning twilight, which this time of year begins about 4:30 a.m., so you can still catch some winks before you take on the coming day.

Meteor showers occur when the Earth, in its orbit around the sun, crosses a debris trail of dust and pebbles left behind by a comet that's passed by.

The "parent" comet for the Perseids is Swift Tuttle, which last passed by this part of the solar system in the early 1990s.

The best way to describe a comet is to compare it to a dirty snowball. As comets get close to our sun, some of the icy nucleus melts and frees dust and pebbles that trail behind.

These billions of meteoroids, as they're more formally known, all become potential ammunition for meteor showers.

You can best see the meteors in any shower after midnight, simply because after midnight your part of the Earth has rotated in such a way that you're facing into the direction of the Earth's path around the sun and the comet debris.

These resulting meteors streak into Earth's atmosphere at anywhere from 30 to more than 40 miles per second.

Air friction incinerates the dust size to pebble size debris at altitudes of 30 to 60 miles high, but the streak of light you see is much more than just these tiny meteoroids getting toasted.

In fact, if that's all there was you'd never see anything. How could you, as tiny as they are?

Most of the light to see from meteors is caused by ionization. Even though most of the meteoroids are tiny, they temporarily, but greatly, excite the atoms and molecules in the column of air causing an extremely vivid collective glow.

Often times even after you see the initial streak there's a luminous trail that can go on for a few seconds. That's the column of air getting its molecules and atoms back together in their original stable state. Meteors can also have some color to them; blues, greens, reds, yellows and more depending on the nature of the material, the speed and angle they're coming in at, and the height at which they become visible.

Different showers are referred to by the constellation where their radiant originates. The radiant is the point in the sky that the meteors seem to be coming from. In the case of the Perseids, the radiant is the constellation Perseus. This time of year, Perseus resides in the east northeastern sky in the post midnight hours.

That doesn't mean that the meteors will be restricted to that part of the sky, however. They will be literally all over the sky, but their tails will seem to point back in the general direction Perseus.

In fact, it's not even necessary to be able to find and identify Perseus in the sky. Again, my advice is just to lie back on the ground or on that reclining lawn chair and roll your eyes all around the sky, maybe slightly favoring the eastern sky.

The Perseids are also known as St. Lawrence's Tears in honor of the young Christian martyred by the Roman Emperor Valerian on Aug. 10th in 258 A.D.

The poor guy was roasted alive on a giant barbecue spit. After he met his demise and mourners were carrying his body away that night, streaks of light were falling like tears from the sky.

The faithful believed back then that they were seeing celestial tears from heaven over the passing of St. Lawrence. They believe that the "tears" show up again every year on the anniversary of his painful martyrdom.

Don't miss the pleasure of the Perseids. I don't think you'll break out in tears but you'll certainly miss one of great treats of summer stargazing. Just lying under a huge chunk of the universe even without the meteor shower is such a privilege!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book "Pennsylvania Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his website www.lynchandthestars.com.