The Perseids Peak the Night School Starts. For Once, No Moon.

The Perseids come back every August, and most years the moon ruins them. Not this one. The shower peaks overnight August 12 into the morning of August 13, and the moon turns new on the 12th, which means the sky stays dark all night. Astronomy groups have been pointing at this date for months. Under a genuinely dark sky, observers report on the order of sixty to ninety meteors an hour at the peak, roughly one a minute.

The catch, for anyone with a kid in the district, sits right on the calendar. August 12 is also the first day of school in Magnolia ISD. The best show of the year lands on the first school night of the year. There is no fixing that, but the shower does not switch off outside its peak. It is active for weeks either side, so this weekend's nights will already be throwing meteors, fewer per hour, against a sky nearly as dark.

Watching takes no equipment and no skill. Go out after 11 p.m., later is better, and the hours before dawn are best of all. Give your eyes twenty or thirty minutes away from any bright light, including the phone. Face roughly northeast, toward the constellation Perseus, but do not stare at one point. The meteors streak all over the sky; a lawn chair and patience beat a telescope, which is actually the wrong tool for this.

Location is where Greater Magnolia has the advantage. The glow along FM 1488 washes out the faint ones, so the farther you get from the corridor, the more you see. The farm roads west and north, out toward Dobbin, Montgomery and the 1486 stretch, are some of the darkest driving distance in the county. A backyard works too, if the porch light goes off and the neighbors' floodlights cooperate.

No tickets, no line, no fee. Just a clear forecast, a chair, and a reason to let the kids stay up twenty minutes past a brand-new bedtime. Some school-morning yawns are earned.