The Perseid meteor peaks tonight (evening of the 12th, morning of the 13th of August). This year is favourable, like 2005 there is no Moon to wash out the sky.

Observers will need to look in an easterly direction, the radiant is within the constellation of Perseus. However it's best to view as much of the sky as possible rather than focus on the small area around Perseus.

If you stay out for an hour or two you should see perhaps a dozen or two meteors under good conditions.

Some tips for beginners; take a deck chair out there so you can lie down and look at the sky, get away from as many lights as possible to avoid destroying any dark adaptation. You may also want to bring some drink and or food if you get hungry, and bring something to keep you warm as under clear skies it can get quite chilly.

Now this makes a change from my other photos of the Space Station and Space Shuttle.

I hooked my Toucam Pro II webcam to my 6 inch TAL 2M reflector (at prime focus) to take these. By my reckoning the middle two pictures here are at a distance of around 400km, the first and last probably closer to 700-800km.

You can see the Shuttle quite well on the first three images you can make out the black engine area towards one side of the station.

In a future post I'll blow one of the images up and we can see if we can point out the individual modules of the station, I can see three or four in the last image quite well. I've also got the video sat here, so you can see what I had to work with. Yes hand guiding the telescope to keep up with the thing is rather difficult.

Update: Here's the video.