A suspected meteor flash wowed observers in Argentina early Sunday — and sparked memories of February's more serious blast over Russia.

The fireball lit up the night in north and central Argentina at about 3:30 a.m. local time, according to accounts from Argentine news outlets. "The sky lit up completely for a couple of seconds and interrupted the calm in this area of Argentina," BarrioOeste.com reported. Witnesses in Catamarca, Tucuman and Santiago del Estero reported sightings.

Twitter users were buzzing over the fireball: A widely shared amateur video showed the green streak and flash in the background of a concert setting. Britain's ITV network reported that the footage was captured in Salta as the folk music band Los Tekis performed at an outdoor venue.

Jorge Coghlan, director of the Astronomical Observatory of Santa Fe, told La Gaceta in Tucuman that the object could have been a space rock about 20 centimeters (8 inches) in diameter that entered the atmosphere at high speed. "This object disintegrated at an altitude high enough to be seen for hundreds of miles," Coghlan said.

Other experts estimated the diameter at 40 to 45 centimeters (15 to 18 inches).

In comparison, the asteroid that came apart over Russia on Feb. 15 was thought to be 17 meters (55 feet) in diameter. That meteor blast created a shock wave that blew out windows and injured more than 1,000 people. No injuries were reported in the wake of the Argentine fireball.

More about meteors:

• East Coast meteor sets off media scramble
• Lyrid meteors bloom in the night sky
• Cosmic Log archive on meteors

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Jeff Berkes Photography

A meteor streaks through starry skies in a picture captured by photographer Jeff Berkes on Sunday from Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in southern Maryland. Check out Berkes' Facebook page for more.

Like a spring flower, the annual Lyrid meteor shower is about to blossom in the night sky, and you've got several days to catch sight of the bloom as it grows.

"Meteor season is back!" photographer Jeff Berkes exulted in an email.

Although it's not the year's best shooting-star display, the Lyrids serve as a harbinger of spring and warmer days for skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere. At its peak, on the night of April 21-22, the meteors should flash every three to six minutes or so. But that's the expected rate under ideal conditions: clear skies, far from city lights, with no sources of glare in the sky.

Unfortunately, there'll be one big source of glare this time around: the moon, which will be nearing its full phase on the best night. That would be an argument for getting out a couple of hours before dawn sometime in the days ahead, to catch the early meteors in darker skies. That's how Berkes captured his primo image of a meteor streak against the backdrop of the Milky Way.

"I had been traveling for days while sleeping out of my car as I continue my dark sky projects," the Pennsylvania-based photographer wrote. "I drove over 1,000 miles in three days, visited several states, and came home with over 3,000 pictures in addition to some time-lapse work. After spending two days in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I decided to move north to have a chance at viewing the northern lights Saturday night into Sunday morning. While I waited for the polar activity to pick up, I set up a couple of cameras up in different locations. I ended up capturing this meteor before I drove to a fourth location around 4 a.m. The best part is watching a meteor fall right through the middle of your frame. It was a beautiful way to end the trip, and a good sign that the Lyrids are coming!"

Like other meteor showers, the Lyrids are sparked by the cosmic debris left behind by a comet. In this case, the debris comes from Comet Thatcher, which comes around every 415 years. Every April, when our planet passes through the trail of bits left behind by the comet, some of those bits zoom through Earth's upper atmosphere and ionize the air. That's what creates the meteor streaks. The Lyrids are so named because the streaks appear to emanate from a point in the constellation Lyra.

Don't expect to see fireworks: "Rates this early in the activity curve would be low, less than one per hour no matter your location," Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society says on the MeteorObs mailing list. But if you're lucky, you could spot a fireball like the one that skywatcher Salvador Aguirre reported from Mexico. If you do get snapshots of meteors blooming, feel free to share it with us via our FirstPerson photo-upload page. We'll pass along more pictures as the Lyrids blossom.

More about meteors:

• East Coast meteor sets off a buzz
• Tips for making the most of meteors
• Cosmic Log archive on meteors

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

A Friday night flash of light in the skies over the East Coast sparked a rash of meteor sighting reports, followed by a mad dash to track down photos and videos of the event.

The American Meteor Society logged more than 800 reports from a region ranging from  North Carolina to Washington to New York to New England to Canada. Hundreds more registered their observations on Twitter.  One Twitter user, known as @Married2TheNite, reported from New Jersey that he saw — and heard — the object pass by. "It was making almost a hissing noise as it flew brightly overhead," he wrote. "I saw it around 7:55 p.m. EDT."

That time frame meshed with the many other reports. Some witnesses said they saw flashes of green, red and blue as the object streaked past.

The reports were consistent with a fireball — similar to the one that flashed over Russia on Feb. 15, but much, much smaller.

"It's not an incredibly rare event, but it is very unusual to have that many people observe it, and also it was unusually bright," Ron Dantowitz, director of the Clay Center Observatory, told NBC station WHDH-TV in Boston. "These types of meteors happen once or twice a year. The unusual thing is that it was so well observed not so long after sunset."

Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environmental Office told The Associated Press that the flash appeared to be "a fireball that moved roughly toward the southeast, going on visual reports."

"Judging from the brightness, we're dealing with something as bright as the full moon," Cooke said. "The thing is probably a yard across. We basically have (had) a boulder enter the atmosphere over the Northeast."

For a while, Twitter buzzed with tweets and retweets highlighting pictures that falsely purported to show the Friday night light — but eventually, bona fide views surfaced. The paucity of honest-to-goodness meteor shots contrasted with the wealth of dashboard videos that came to light after last month's Russian meteor blast.

"The meteor has taught us one thing tonight," Cara Lynch tweeted, "the East Coast needs more dash cameras." 

One of the most widely distributed videos of Friday night's flash came from someone who didn't actually see it when it happened. "I wish I would have seen it for real," said Kim Fox, a first-grade teacher from Thurmont, Md.

Fox told NBC News that she checked her security-camera system after hearing about the meteor. At around the time that news reports said the meteor was widely sighted, she saw a bright flash on one of the camera views. She took out her mobile phone, recorded a video of the video, and posted it to her Facebook page. From there, the video went viral on the Web and on TV newscasts.

"The phones have been ringing all night," Fox said.

Did you see the flash? Add your sighting report to the American Meteor Society's log, and tell me about it in the comment space below. Got pictures? Feel free to post them to the Cosmic Log Facebook page.

Update for 3:44 p.m. ET March 23: In one reference, I mistakenly placed Thurmont in New Jersey rather than Maryland. And it's WHDH, not WDHD. Sorry about that! Also, more video views of the flash have come in. Hopkins Automotive Group posted this flashy security camera video on its Facebook page. There's also this dashcam view from WUSA9 photojournalist Kurt Brooks.

More about meteors:

• Russian meteor lurked for thousands of years
• Geminid meteors sparkle like gems
• Next big meteor shower? Lyrids in April

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:09 AM EDT

Don Davis

Artwork by Don Davis shows a meteor streaking over Chelyabinsk. More of Davis' art is on his website.

Now that they've worked out the orbital path of the meteor that blew up over Russia last month, scientists are saying that the asteroid behind the blast crossed Earth's orbit regularly for thousands of years. Two weeks ago, it looked as if the 1.1 million residents of the city of Chelyabinsk had been hit by a cosmic stroke of bad luck — but now they're talking about turning the most powerful asteroid impact in more than a century into a tourist attraction.

The Feb. 15 aerial explosion and the shock wave it set off caused an estimated $33 million in property damage, much of it in the form of shattered windows and weakened walls. It also injured about 1,200 people, with most of them hurt by the flying glass from those windows. Authorities started the cleanup work almost immediately, while researchers rushed to figure out the scale of the explosion.

Based on the readings from infrasound sensors stationed all over the world to monitor nuclear-weapons tests, NASA said the energy release was equivalent to 500 kilotons of TNT, or roughly 30 times the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. That translated into an object about 17 meters (55 feet wide), weighing 10,000 tons. The space agency said it was the biggest cosmic impact recognized since the 1908 Tunguska asteroid blast that leveled millions of trees in Siberia.

Less than a week after the blast, Colombian astronomers worked out a rough orbital path for the Chelyabinsk asteroid, based on an analysis of the videos captured by dashboard cameras and traffic cams in the area. On Friday, NASA produced a more definitive orbital track, based not only on the videos but also on the readings from the federal government's space sensors. The report took advantage of a recently signed agreement with the Air Force Space Command for the public release of previously hush-hush data.

Sizing up a superbolide
Friday's assessment is the first entry in a new NASA database for fireballs and bolide reports, which classifies the Chelyabinsk meteor as a "superbolide."

The latest readings confirm the conclusion that the object's orbit ranged from the main asteroid belt, beyond the orbit of Mars, to well within Earth's orbit. They also show that the Chelyabinsk asteroid's approach couldn't have been detected by ground-based optical telescopes because the space rock was hidden in the sun's glare.

P. Chodas et al. / NASA / JPL-Caltech

An orbital diagram shows the pre-impact orbit of the asteroid that blew up over Russia on Feb. 15, based on the track of its atmospheric entry. The asteroid came at Earth from the sunward side.

"The impactor had likely been following this orbit for many thousands of years, crossing the Earth's orbit every time on its outbound leg," NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office said in Friday's assessment.

The fresh readings tweaked previous estimates of the object's size and brightness as well: NASA said the meteor was 17 to 20 meters wide (55 to 65 feet wide), and reached peak brightness at an altitude of 14.5 miles (23.3 kilometers), when it was traveling at a speed of 41,760 mph (18.6 kilometers per second). There's also quite a bit of discussion about the energy release — and why the new estimate for impact energy (440 kilotons, which includes energy lost during atmospheric entry) is so much bigger than the fireball's radiated energy (90 kilotons, which applies only to the blast).

From the get-go, astronomers have said that the Russian meteor was not connected with the close flyby of a much bigger asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, which took place later on the same day. Friday's assessment confirms that lack of a connection — not only because the two orbital paths were markedly different, but also because the two asteroids had different compositions.

NASA said a spectral analysis of 2012 DA14, conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests that the asteroid is a relatively rare carbonaceous chondrite "with abundant calcium- and aluminum-rich inclusions."

"On the other hand, meteorite fragments being recovered from the fireball event are reported as silicate-rich ordinary chondrites, a completely different and unrelated class of meteorites," NASA said. "About 80 percent of all meteorite falls are in the ordinary chondrite category." 

Andrei Romanov / Reuters

A local resident shows a fragment thought to be part of a meteorite collected in a snow-covered field in the Yetkulski region, outside the city of Chelyabinsk.

Taking pride in a superbolide
Scientists may classify the Russian meteorites as an unremarkable kind of space rock, but they're extra-special to the folks in Chelyabinsk. For one thing, such meteorites could be worth more than their weight in gold on the collectors' market. Some have estimated their value at $2,200 per gram. For another thing, the region's residents are now talking about capitalizing on the international interest generated by the impact.

"Space sent us a gift, and we need to make use of it," Natalia Gritsay, head of the region’s tourism department, told Bloomberg News this week. "We need our own Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty."

Among the ideas being debated: building a "Meteor Disneyland" theme park that re-creates the glass-shattering event, or organizing a cosmic music and fireworks festival, or erecting a beacon-tipped pyramid at nearby Chebarkul Lake, where meteorite fragments have been found. Tourist companies are already starting to sell group tours to Chelyabinsk at $800 a person, Bloomberg News reported.

When the meteor exploded, many of the region's residents feared that it was a plane crash, or a missile strike, or even the end of the world. Now it's starting to look as if the superbolide is the best thing to hit Chelyabinsk in years.

“Nobody had heard about us, and now all the world knows,” the region's governor, Mikhail Yurevich, told Bloomberg News. “We can earn some dividends on that."

Slideshow: Meteor streaks over Siberia

Yekaterina Pustynnikova / Chelyabinsk.ru via AP

Click through scenes from Russia's Chelyabinsk region, where a huge meteor fireball set off alarms, injured hundreds of people and caused a factory roof to collapse.

Launch slideshow

More about the meteor:

• Experts get set for the next asteroid
• How to 'hear' the Russian meteor
• NBCNews.com archive on asteroids

Tip o' the Log to space illustrator Don Davis and Spike MacPhee.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Brian Emfinger / RealClearWX

Arkansas photographer Brian Emfinger captured this flash of a Geminid fireball over the city lights of Fort Smith, Ark., early Thursday, using a camera that was set up on Mount Magazine, the state's highest point. For more about Emfinger, check out his website, RealClearWX.com.

Arkansas photographer Brian Emfinger says the best meteor he ever captured on camera happened while he was napping.

"Definitely the brightest meteor I've ever imaged," he said today. "If I was awake, it would have been the brightest meteor I've ever seen."

Emfinger, who snaps pictures of storms and sky phenomena for his RealClearWX website, said the Geminid fireball streaked over the skyline of Fort Smith, Ark., at around 1:07 a.m. CT Thursday, while he was in the midst of an all-night meteor photography session.

The Geminid meteor shower is the year's most reliable display of shooting stars, reaching its peak annually on the night of Dec. 13-14. By most accounts, this was a great year for the Geminids, due to a moonless sky and a meteor tally that reportedly peaked at levels well above the typical 100 to 120 per hour. The flashes occur when bits of debris left behind by an extinct comet known as Phaeton burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

Like many meteor fans, Emfinger was watching the skies not only on the peak night, but on the preceding nights as well. On Wednesday night, he drove up to the top of Mount Magazine, the highest point in Arkansas, and then set up a fisheye camera to take pictures automatically. Sometime after midnight, he settled in for a nap in his car.

A while later, he got a call on his cell phone from a friend who reported seeing something like lightning flashes on the horizon ... on a clear night. "He was assuming it was some spectacular meteor," Emfinger recalled.

As soon as he could, Emfinger checked the shots that were stored on his camera. "I scrolled through them real quick — and there it was, descending toward the skyline of Fort Smith," he said. Observers in Oklahoma and other westward states also reported seeing the fireball, Emfinger said.

That blaze of celestial glory wasn't this week's only Geminid highlight. Scroll down below for other scenes from the past couple of nights. It's important to remember that the show isn't over yet: Although the Geminids have passed their peak, there's still a chance to see a fair number of meteors tonight and tomorrow night. Keep a watch on SpaceWeather.com's gallery for still more meteor photos.

One more thing: In advance of the peak, some experts speculated that there might be a separate wave of meteors that would have been known as the Piscids, sparked by the debris left behind by Comet Wirtanen. These meteors would appear to emanate from a point in the constellation Pisces, rather than the Geminids' point of origin in Gemini. However, I've seen no reports of significant sightings on Thursday night — which suggests that the Piscid meteor shower was a no-show.

Brian Emfinger / RealClearWX

Photographer (and storm chaser) Brian Emfinger captured a bright Geminid fireball on camera early today from Mount Magazine State Park in Arkansas. "My camera caught a bunch of meteors, the most I've ever gotten in any one night of shooting meteors," Emfinger told SpaceWeather.com. Check out Emfinger's website, RealClearWX.com.

Frank S. Andreassen / Nettfoto.com

Norwegian photographer Frank S. Andreassen captured this shot of a meteor streaking through the northern lights outside Harstad at 9:30 p.m. local time Thursday night. For more of Andreassen's work, go to Nettfoto.com.

Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

Israelis float in a hot spring on the shore of the Dead Sea, near the kibbutz of Ein Gedi, as they look for Geminid meteor streaks above the Judean desert.

Jeffrey Phelps

A Geminid meteor appears to dive into the trees in Saukville, Wis., early Friday. Photographer Jeffrey Phelps sent in this image via NBC News' FirstPerson photo-sharing page for sky highlights. (You can, too.)

More about the meteors:

• Aurora sets stage for meteor show
• Flash interactive: What causes a meteor show?
• The scientific story behind meteor showers

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

MPAe

Comet Wirtanen streaks across a field of stars, as seen through a telescope at the Pik Terskol Observatory in the Russian Caucasus. The observers were T. Credner, K. Jockers and T. Bonev. Wirtanen left behind a trail of debris that may spark a minor meteor shower this week.

The Geminid meteor shower looks as if it'll put on a great show late Thursday night and early Friday morning, but this year's production might turn out to be a double feature: Experts say a new bunch of shooting stars, tentatively known as the Piscids, might make their appearance as a warmup act.

"If it does appear, it will be a minor shower, so people should not expect a major outburst" said Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. "The Geminids will dwarf this new meteor shower. They're still the best show."

The Piscids are expected to produce 30 meteors per hour at most, while the Geminids can account for 100 to 120 meteors per hour, Cooke said. There's also a chance that the Piscids will be a non-event.

The Geminid shower is a completely different kettle of fish: It  ranks as the year's most reliable meteor shows. The Geminids peak annually on Dec. 13-14 when Earth passes through the trail of cosmic debris left behind by a fizzled-out comet known as Phaeton. Because of the orientation of that debris trail, Geminid meteors appear to come from a point in the constellation Gemini — hence the shower's name.

Based on computer models run by Russian forecaster Mikhail Maslov, the new meteor shower would seem to emanate from a different point in the sky, in the constellation Pisces. The source of the cosmic debris would be Comet Wirtanen, which was discovered in 1948 and takes 5.4 years to orbit the sun. NASA says the comet has skirted Earth's orbit many times, but according to Maslov, this year could mark the first time Earth plows right through Wirtanen's debris trail.

"The meteors from this new shower will be slower-moving than the Geminids," Cooke said. Also, the Piscids are expected to peak before the Geminids. Cooke suggests setting up your meteor-watching post early Thursday evening in case the Piscids show up, and then lingering into the wee hours of Friday for the Geminids' main event.

This year should be particularly good for Geminid watchers, because there'll be no moon in the sky to overwhelm the meteor streaks. "We saw a fair number last night," Cooke said. "I expect they will do about normal this year."

Cooke is getting set to host an Internet chat and live video feed of the Geminids from Marshall Space Flight Center on Thursday night, starting at 11 p.m. ET. He's also reminding people to "stay warm" when they go meteor-watching on a frosty December night.

British astronomer Mark Thompson has lots of good advice about what to wear for winter stargazing at Discovery News, and I'll just add that a thermos of hot beverage (coffee or tea, hot chocolate or soup) goes a long way toward keeping you comfortable amid the chill. You'll want to get to a place with clear, open skies, far away from city lights — and don't expect to see a fireworks show. A meteor shower is a far more subtle affair. My top 10 bits of advice for watching August's Perseid meteor shower work surprisingly well for December's Geminids, and EarthSky.org offers yet another top-10 list of tips.

If you snap a great picture during the Geminids, please consider sharing your gem with the rest of us. You can upload photos via our FirstPerson Web page for sky highlights, and I'll try to pass along some good ones on Friday. Keep a watch on SpaceWeather.com as well.

More about meteors:

• Year's best meteor shower nears its peak
• Superb Geminid meteor shower coming up
• Flash interactive: What causes a meteor show?
• The scientific story behind meteor showers

Tip o' the Log to NASA Science News.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

(c) Jeff Berkes Photography

This photo combines the landscape of the Florida Keys with the flash of a meteor above on the night of Jan. 3-4, at the peak of the Quadrantid meteors.

January is the perfect time for a road trip to Florida, and if there's a promising meteor shower to see, so much the better. That's what brought photographer Jeff Berkes down from Pennsylvania to the Florida Keys. The payoff came in the form of a stunning set of pictures showing the Quadrantid meteors at their peak.

"The Florida Keys sounded really good in January for the Quadrantid meteor shower, but Mother Nature had the cold front follow me all the way south," Berkes wrote in his Flickr photo gallery. "The record low temperature for Key West is 41 degrees. It went down to 46, with winds around 20-30 mph near Big Pine Key this particular night on January 3rd / 4th, 2012."

Berkes bundled up in two sweatshirts and a fleece, plus "a mad bomber hat" and winter gloves. Then he waited for the light show to begin. He wasn't disappointed.

One picture shows twisted trees in the Keys, with a meteor flashing in the sky above. "That was captured earlier in the night, while the moon was still up," Berkes told me in an email. "It might even be just a random meteor instead of a Quadrantid meteor."

Scientists say the Quadrantids are sparked every year on the night of Jan. 3-4, when Earth passes through the trail of cosmic grit left behind by a burnt-out comet now known as asteroid 2003 EH1. These particular meteors appear to emanate from a now-obsolete constellation known as Quadrans Muralis, or the Mural Quadrant. That's why they're known as the Quadrantids.

This year was a particularly good year for the "Quads," in part because because the moon had set by the time the meteor shower really got going. This year's shower was reported to reach a peak ratae of roughly 80 shooting stars per hour in the wee hours of Jan. 4. Berkes benefited from a bonus: the faint glow of the zodiacal light. You can see it in the picture below:

(c) Jeff Berkes Photography

A green light pen was used to add "2012" as a signature to this photo of a meteor and the zodiacal light over the Florida Keys.

"The triangular column of light you see is the zodiac lights, stretching up into the night sky before dawn," Berkes told me. "Light coming from the sun [while it's] well below the horizon is scattered by 'space dust,' making it visible in dark locations before sunrise and after sunset. It is definitely something I do not see every day."

Berkes said he counted close to 100 meteors while he was out. He has mastered a technique called "light painting," which calls for adding illumination to a night scene during a long exposure. We featured one of his light-painting photos last fall during the Orionid meteor shower, and you can see the effect in these photo as well.

"The '2012' in green is just another light-painting trick with a special green pen," he wrote. "The Quadrantids of 2012 were certainly better than 2011. I'm thinking it could be a sign that 2012 will be an even better year than 2011."

I'm thinking the same... Or at least wishing it will be so.

Check out Berkes' Flickr photostream or his Web site for additional visual treasures. You'll find more Quadrantid images at the SpaceWeather.com Web site. There could be still more night-sky sights on the way: SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips says a coronal mass ejection from the sun "might deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field" on Saturday, sparking enhanced auroras.

The next big meteor show is farther out on the schedule: The Lyrids are due to reach their peak on the night of April 22-23. 

More meteoric marvels:

• Quadrantid meteor show sparks chills and thrills
• Astronaut catches a falling star during the Perseids
• Can you spot the missing meteor in this video?

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Brian Emfinger / RealClearWx.com

Brian Emfinger photographed this Perseid fireball in 2009. (More photos at RealClearWx.com.)

August's Perseid meteor shower ranks among the year's most popular sky shows, and provides a great opportunity to drink in a big gulp of night-sky goodness. So what if this year's meteor shower won't be as spectacular as it could be? There are still plenty of ways to maximize your enjoyment of this year's Perseid performance.

First, a reality check: In a normal year, observers could spot more than a meteor a minute under optimal viewing conditions during the peak of the Perseids, which usually comes on the night of Aug. 12-13. The conditions aren't optimal this year, however, because the moon is big and full during what are traditionally the best hours for meteor-watching, between midnight and dawn. All that glare makes it harder to see the fast, faint streaks of light in the night.

The best strategy is to find an observation point that's free of clouds and city lights, and also has an obstruction to the south that stands a chance of blocking the moon's disk — whether that's a barn, a tree or a mountain. Anything that reduces the glare will increase your chances of spotting meteors.

What to watch for
The Perseids' peak comes at the same time each year because that's when Earth travels through the path of gritty space debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which crosses our planet's orbital path every 133 years. When those bits of grit pass through the upper reaches of our atmosphere at speeds of more than 125,000 mph, they light up trails of ionized air. Every once in a while, the more substantial bits flare up as fireballs.

The Perseids are so named because they appear to emanate from a spot in the constellation Perseus, known as the radiant. It's good to keep an eye on the radiant if you can, but in fact, meteors can flash anywhere in the night sky. For that reason, meteor-watching is best done with the naked eye rather than binoculars or telescopes.

NASA

Perseid meteors appear to emanate from a point in the constellation Perseus, as shown in this graphic depicting the northeastern sky at around midnight. Although the meteors can appear in any part of the sky, their tails can be traced back to that point.

However, you might want to bring along those things nevertheless, to look at other celestial sights such as Saturn (in western skies late Friday), Jupiter (in eastern skies early Saturday) and Mars (rising in the east just before dawn). Don't believe those hoax emails that claim Mars will be as big as the moon this month — but do take the opportunity to go planet-hunting if you can. The Heavens-Above website can show you where to look.

Another celestial object to watch for is the International Space Station, the brightest human-made object in the night sky. Many localities will have multiple opportunities to watch the space station on Friday and Saturday night. To check the schedule for your location, consult NASA's station tracking database.

Party all night ... online
Meteor-watching is best enjoyed as a group activity, and this year NASA will be presenting an all-night online party to keep track of the Perseids. Astronomer Bill Cooke and his colleagues from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will be chatting away from 11 p.m. ET Friday to 5 a.m. Saturday. Click on over to this webpage to join the chat when it starts. There'll also be live video from all-sky cameras maintained by NASA.

Finally, here's a recap of last year's top-ten tips for maximizing even a mediocre meteor shower:

1. Pick a viewing spot far away from city lights, where the skies are likely to be clear and wide-open. Higher elevations are usually better than lower elevations.
2. For help in site selection, you can check out the Clear Sky Chart website, which provides weather conditions for skywatching ... and links to popular viewing locations on a state-by-state basis. Your local astronomy club can also point you in the right direction. Some events for amateur astronomers are timed to take advantage of the Perseids — for example, this year's star party in California's Mojave Desert.
3. Bring a blanket or a chaise lounge to lie back on. Have layers of clothing available in case the air turns chilly at night. Bring snacks or drinks. Bring a flashlight so you can find your way through the dark.
4. Bring a music player or radio if you need a diversion. But don't forget the earphones if you're going to be alongside other groups who may not appreciate your musical taste. Frankly, the best diversion is a deep philosophical conversation with your meteor-watching friends.
5. Don't give up too quickly. Give your eyes plenty of time to get accustomed to the dark. Although the meteors appear to emanate from the radiant in Perseus, don't focus exclusively on that point. "The closer the meteor is to the radiant, the shorter the trail is," Cooke says. "I always tell people to look straight up, because that way, they'll catch plenty of meteors far enough from the radiant to see a trail."
6. The later you can stay up, the better. Generally speaking, meteor shows don't get good until after midnight, when Earth is turning into the stream of meteor debris.
7. To get a better sense of what to expect at which time, use NASA's Fluxtimator. When you click in the right coordinates for meteor shower, date, location and viewing conditions, the Java-based calculator charts what the estimated meteor flux will be at different times.
8. If you're totally clouded out, you can try listening to the meteors. The video stream on NASA's Perseid Web page will be accompanied by a soundtrack of radio blips created by the meteor streaks. Cooke says it's also possible to hear the radio blips by tuning your FM radio to a station so distant that all you can hear is the hiss of a carrier wave. "When a meteor passes, you'll hear a blip kind of like a sonar blip," Cooke said. Here's a spooky audio file that gives you an idea what the radio echoes sound like. SpaceWeather Radio also lets you hear the meteors.
9. If you want to share your meteor sightings with the world via Twitter — and find out where the sightings are sizzling — the MeteorWatch website is the place for you.
10. Even if you miss the meteor shower completely, you can click through the gallery of greatest hits at SpaceWeather.com. And you can start making plans for the Leonid meteor shower (peaking Nov. 17-18), the Geminids (peaking Dec. 13-14) and next year's Perseids, when the moon conditions will be much, much better.

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