The Perseid Meteor shower is upon us, literally.

All of us on spaceship Earth are really moving fast, traveling around the sun at more than 67,000 miles an hour.

Throughout the year, Earth runs into debris trails made of dust and pebbles left behind by comets. When this happens, we get a meteor shower.

This week we're heading into one of the thicker trails, so we're getting one of the best meteor showers of the year. This year, the Perseids should be perfect because there will be very little or no moonlight in the sky.

The annual Perseid shower is certainly the most weather-friendly meteor shower in Butler. You can stay out all night long without frostbite.

The peak of the Perseids is this coming Wednesday night into Thursday morning, Aug. 11 and 12. There may be a bit of an encore performance Thursday night into Friday morning, Aug. 12-13, but don't count on it.

The very best time to see the Perseid “shooting stars” will be from about 1 a.m. to just before morning twilight on Thursday morning. That's because after midnight, your location on the Earth has rotated toward the direction of the comet debris.

If you can, drive out to the dark countryside if you're not already out there. In the darker skies after midnight you could easily see at least 50 meteors an hour, or possibly up to 100. In brighter urban skies, there's a good chance you'll see more than 20 meteors an hour.

Carefully check out the weather forecast. If it looks like it'll be too cloudy early Thursday morning, try the mornings leading up to the peak on Thursday. You'll still see a decent number of meteors. Some will be visible in the early mornings after the peak, but not as many.

The best way to enjoy the Perseids is to lie back on the ground or a reclining lawn chair and roll your eyes all around the sky.

Above all, be patient. Many times, meteors come in batches during meteor showers. All you need are your God-given eyes. Binoculars on small areas of the sky. You need to see the "big picture."

The Perseid meteor shower is named after the constellation Perseus the Hero because the meteors seem to come from the general direction of Perseus, in the high northeast sky. However, meteors can show up anywhere in the sky.

The comet debris providing the ammunition for the Perseids comes from Comet Swift Tuttle, which last came by this part of the solar system back in 1992. The bits and pieces get gravitationally sucked into our atmosphere.

Air friction then goes to work: 99.9 percent of the debris gets toasted and burned up about 50 to 75 miles above the ground. The streaks of light you're seeing are not because of combustion.

They are the result of a chemical reaction in the column of air that the debris is ripping through.

It's entering at average speeds of 130,000 mph. That's faster than a speeding bullet out of a gun. Atoms and molecules in these individual columns of air are temporarily destabilized, producing the light we see.

Meteors can be different colors, but the disrupted nitrogen and oxygen atoms in our atmosphere produce the many blue and green tinges in the quick streaks across the heavens.

In December, the Geminid meteor shower is slightly more robust, but try lying out in a lawn chair watching them. Pray for clear skies this week and enjoy the Perseids. They're worth losing sleep over.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of "Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations," published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.