Star gazers hope to be treated to a spectacular lights display when one of the best meteor showers of the year bursts into the skies over Kent.

It is predicted that the peak of the Perseids meteor shower will be on Friday night into the early hours of Saturday morning, when the sky should be at its darkest.

The meteors are created when Earth passes through a cloud of debris left behind by a comet and the Perseids are associated with Comet 109/P Swift-Tuttle, which last passed near Earth in 1992.

When comets travel close to the sun, they heat up and disintegrate. If this happens in the Earth’s path around the sun, they can head towards our atmosphere at high speeds. The superheated air around the meteors glows and leaves behind trails of light and explosions in the form of fireballs.

The Perseid shower, which is usually best viewed from the northern hemisphere, starts around mid July and will last until late August, but it is across this weekend that sky watchers usually hope to be treated to the best of the action.

With England in the midst of another blistering heatwave, which is bringing with it clear skies and very little cloud and rain, the weather is unlikely to impact people's chances of seeing the meteors however the moon will be up all night during the predicted peak and this may impact on the numbers people could see.

The last giant supermoon of 2022 is set to light up UK skies at the end of this week and its arrival is set to coincide - or clash - with the best of the meteors, potentially dampening their display.

Under a dark sky with no moon, sky watchers often catch up to 90 meteors or more every hour - but experts including website EarthSky suggest this year's display may not be quite so bountiful because of the competing moon.

The best way to catch a glimpse of the radiant show will still be away from the lights of towns and cities, to give you the best possible chance of the darkest sky, and away from buildings and trees so that you can get a clear view of the horizon.

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