Grab your lawn chairs, blankets, kids and hot chocolate. Plan to camp out - yes out - under the stars this weekend.

If you do, you're in for a stellar show.

“This is the Perseid meteor shower,” said Dan Neal.

He's the curly haired guy, the amateur astronomer often seen near big telescopes in parking lots locally when there are fun things happening in the solar system. (See sidebar for where to find Dan Neal tonight and Sunday.)

Here on the coast, it's easy to assume there will be a big old moon hanging in the sky to ruin the meteoric view. Not this weekend.

“We're fortunate enough to have a new moon today,” Neal said.

Clouds?

Forecasters say coastal skies should be clear tonight for a while and partly cloudy Sunday night. But the key is the sky will be dark, deeply dark. And the shooting stars white, bright white.

“All the meteor showers are the result of a comet that's gone past Earth's orbit, and they leave a debris trail,” Neal said.

That debris cloud streams in space for years, thousands of years, and the meteor showers happen as the Earth moves through.

“Even the little tiny bits that are out there will be shooting stars. In the Perseids, you will see as many as 95 an hour. That's what makes it fun,” Neal said.

No binoculars or telescopes are needed for this celestial event. Just get outside when it's dark. Even people who live in town are likely to see meteors if they can see stars on a typical night.

The peak of the storm is supposed to be around midnight on Sunday.

Look east, since Earth is rolling to the east there may seem to be more shooting stars radiating from that direction, though meteors will be visible anywhere across the sky.

“It's like driving down a rainy road. More raindrops hit the front window than the back window,” Neal said.

The Perseid meteors are caused by dust left behind in 1862 by Comet Swift-Tuttle as it passed on its orbit around the sun, according to astronomers. It passed by this way again in 1992 and added more debris along the trail.

Typically, comet debris is small grains of sand and dust, probably silicates or metals, said Rick Kang, the outreach coordinator for the Friends of Pine Mountain Observatory.

“Nobody really has that good of a handle on it. A couple years ago, NASA collected stardust and is analyzing it now,” Kang said.

NASA launched a Delta 2 rocket carrying the Stardust spacecraft on Feb. 7, 1999. The spacecraft deployed gel pads as it moved through comet dust, sweeping up particles. Now, researchers are sorting it all.

As to meteor showers, Kang agreed with Neal that they are just plain fun.

“A lot of things in space take so long to happen,” Kang said.

But meteors flash in the night sky all the time, and meteor showers happen almost a dozen times a year.

“A lot of people don't realize the Earth is hit daily by 50 tons of debris,” Neal said.

Most of it comes in fast and burns right up, he added.

People who plunk down outside this weekend are likely to see more than just meteors. There are satellites, of course. But there are bigger and better contraptions, too. NASA databases say the space shuttle and International Space Station might be visible around 9:18 p.m. and 10:53 p.m. Saturday, and Sunday at 9:40 p.m. Watch for a bright moving light crossing the sky from the northwest to the northeast.

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On the Net

Astronomy magazine

http://www.astronomy.com

NASA

http://www.nasa.gov

Stardust Mission

http://www.stardust.jpl.nasa.gov

International Space Station schedule

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

Pine Mountain Observatory

http://pmo-sun.uoregon.edu/~pmo/