Meteor!

A week from today, the Perseid meteor shower will peak. This year the show will be somewhat compromised by a gibbous moon. The glare from the moon can wash out all but the brightest meteors. However, the moon sets at about 2:00 AM; after that the viewing should be good.

Like other meteor showers, it's not a one night show. The number of meteors will slowly ramp up over the next days, peaking Monday night and Tuesday morning, then taper off over the following week. The hours between sunset and midnight see fewer meteors, but the ones that are visible tend to be quite spectacular as they skim across the upper atmosphere. They tend to be more numerous and shorter lived after midnight. Spaceweather.com does a good job of following these sorts of events, and posts pictures (sometimes even videos; today there's a short clip of a fireball over New Mexico; use the archive tab upper right on the page to get to August 5) and skywatching tips for you. Another good resource is NASA's 2008 Perseid Meteor Shower page. The sky maps you see on pages such as this can be a little misleading; the meteors don't necessarily start in the constellation Perseus, but if you trace the paths of the streaks back, they tend to radiate from that direction. Keep an eye out!