3

Avoid Moonlight

The nearly full Moon (it comes officially on the evening of Nov. 19) will drown out fainter meteors – as much at 75 percent of the storm won’t be visible, Cooke says. But there’s something you can do.

Try to block the Moon with a hill or tall building. Descending into a valley would help, providing it’s oriented north-south. The Moon will be high in the western sky after midnight local time. It will be lower, near the western horizon, during the expected pre-dawn peak in eastern North America (westerners will have to deal with a Moon that’s higher during the peak, which comes earlier in terms of local time).

The goal is not merely to blot out the Moon, as with your hand, but to watch the sky from a sort of tunnel, which can block more of the moonlight that is scattered by the atmosphere. The deeper your tunnel, the more light you get rid of.

For residents of the east coast, the Moon will be high in the western sky after midnight and will be lower, near the western horizon, just before dawn. Westerners will have less success employing this tip, because the Moon will be high in the sky during the predicted peak.

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More ways to generate darkness in Tip #4 …