Illinois meteor showers

Get ready for shooting stars and celestial magic as August unfolds with the Perseid Meteor Shower and the Parade of Planets lighting up our skies.

Sure, you've got lots of things going on in your life right now because it's the holiday season, but try to take a moment this week to catch the peak viewing time of the first of two meteor showers we'll be able to see before the month is over.

Not one, but two meteor showers that have the potential to be really spectacular are going to be highlighting the skies over Illinois for almost the entire month of December, and we'll get pretty good looks at Venus and Saturn, too.

With clear skies at night over the next 3 to 5 days, we should be able to catch the streaks through the skies of the Taurid Meteor Showers here in Northern Illinois.

The Orionids occur when the Earth moves through the trail of leftover ice and rocky dust from Halley's Comet, which is exactly what's happening this week.

There have been far too many times that we could have seen a really cool meteor shower in Illinois skies...but we didn't because the weather just wouldn't cooperate. It's been too cloudy, there's been too much moonlight, whatever. Not this time, according to expert sky watchers. We should have a great look at a really cool sky show.

Experts say that the Perseid meteor shower is this year's "most prolific" meteor shower, meaning that at its peak, you could see up to and beyond 75 shooting stars per hour this coming weekend. Here's the information you'll need to look up at the best time.