The sparks of light called the Perseid meteors will come streaking from the northeast over the next night or two.
This famous annual shower tends to rise gradually toward its peak and dwindle more rapidly afterwards. Around the peak, you might in ideal circumstances count up to 150 meteors per hour, though I think 50 is more likely. The peak this year is expected to be Aug. 12 around 19h Universal Time, which is 3 PM EDT in the U.S. Central time zone. So it’s in daylight for the U.S., and you’re probably seeing the advance fringe of the meteor stream on August 11 and stragglers on August 12.
The Moon will be at Last Quarter on Aug. 15, so it is rising not long before midnight.
You may be interested to know that The Under-Standing of Eclipses is popular enough that it has been adopted as a Kindle e-book, which you can find just by googling its title. I think this is the link you will reach:
I’m told it is “available on Kindle reading app, iPads, Fire tablets etc.” It’s only $9.99; or, if you already have the printed book, only $2.99. You can also, during the first two weeks, “lend” it to friends.
I was amazed that Kindle’s conversion team succeeded in fitting the complex design and graphics of the book into this very different format.
To me, however, the experience shows that a bundle of paper pages is far, far more pleasing, usable, surveyable, at any rate for a book like this in which parts keep referring to each other, in which you want to keep looking back or ahead at a page while considering what is said or shown by another page. Still, the e-book would be handy to carry along with you as you travel to the path of the great August 21 eclipse.
I also prefer printed books over their electronic simulacra. I’ve just re-read _The Under-Standing of Eclipses_ in preparation for my first total solar eclipse. I’ll carry it with me, along with Fred Espenak and Jay Anderson’s _Eclipse Bulletin_.
Please think good thoughts for the fires in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming to go out, no new fires, and the smoke to clear from Jackson Hole.