How are the perseids on the days leading up to the peak (eg aug 7/8/9)

[haqattaqq]

I'm planning on watching the Perseid meteor shower as I do every year with my son... however he's been invited to a friends cabin for august 10-14... right during the peak viewing times. Question is - how many meteors should we expect to see (roughly)? I'm not looking for an exact count - more like is it going to be 80% of peak viewing, 20% of peak viewing, etc.

We watched all of the fall and winter ones and got clouded out on every single event... plus I see that next year will be a full moon during the Perseid peak, so I'm really hoping for some decent viewing this year.

If it matters I'm on the west coast of canada and have a pretty good viewing spot (no lights for quite a distance).

Thanks!

[PEMS]

The Perseids appear to have a fairly high count per hour - around 100 as a maximum. Table at AMSMETEORS

However I would say do not expect anything like that in reality. I wandered out one year on the night of the peak and saw a total of zero in around 2 hours, and it was after midnight. The table linked above says the optimum time is around 04:00 as that is when whatever part of the big ball of rock we are on is turned into the shower.

Always find it difficult to correlate the time and date as I tend to think of 04:00 as being the night of the previous day, in astro terms it will be a case of being the "night" of July 11th, before I would wake up on the 12th.

The AMS table(s) are useful. Sometimes just fun to realise there is a minor shower and just go have a hopeful look.

Geminids seem to be earlier in the day - as in 01:00, but they are later in the year. In the minor meteor showers there are some that are sort of late evening, thinking the Kappa Cygnids and Northern Taurids. I will say that a rate of 2, 3 or 4 per hour is at least in my opinion not really a shower. Still have a read and make up your mind and choices. The "Weak showers" are really weak.

Best times seem to vary slightly. I recall one of the main showers being given specified somewhere with the best time being around 21:00, as was another of the showers. The AMS table has nothing that early in the evening. So there are differences.

[Scosmico]

If you have a dark sky, between 3rd to 7th of August it is realistic to expect 3 to 5 bright ones per hour and other smaller ones, but not all related to the Perseids. There are some smaller (around 5) active showers such as delta Aquarieds and alpha Capricorniads for example, all peaking at end of July that can be added to the increasing activity of perseids.