Perseids from Bengaluru in 2026

Worth planning for

Perseids: worth planning for, cloud permitting

Plan for 02:00–05:00 local time: the radiant reaches 43° above the horizon, the Moon is only 0% lit and out of the way, and astronomical darkness lasts 8 h 57 min. Under the reference dark sky that rates about 63 meteors an hour — cloud cover is a runtime fact this page cannot know, so treat it as the ceiling, not a promise.

Maximum (local)
07:30 · 13 August 2026
Night of
12 August 2026
Best window
02:00–05:00
Peak rate
63.1/h
Radiant (best)
43.3° NNE
Moon
0% lit
Cloud cover
unavailable

Local to Bengaluru

Sunset
18:42
Astronomical dusk
19:56
Astronomical dawn
04:53
Sunrise
06:07
Dark hours
8 h 57 min
Radiant culminates
06:06 · 45.0°
Solar midnight
00:24
Latitude
13.0°N

Light-pollution data for this location is not connected yet. Rates use the reference rural sky (limiting magnitude 6.5) the zenithal hourly rate is defined against, so no Bortle class is claimed for Bengaluru.

Perseids from Bengaluru: the short answer

The Perseids reaches maximum at 07:30 local time on 13 August 2026 over Bengaluru, Karnataka (13.0°N, 77.59°E, 920 m). The radiant culminates 45.0° high at 06:06 and the useful window runs 02:00–05:00, with an ideal-sky ceiling of 63.1 meteors an hour.

That ranks it 2nd of twelve from Bengaluru this year, behind the Geminids (141.0/h).

The radiant track over this city

At 13.0°N a declination-+57.9° radiant traces an arc from 22:39 to 13:31, topping out at 45.0° at 06:06 bearing 0°. Inside the dark window it only manages 43.3°, and that lower figure is the one the rates are built from. The radiant currently lies in Cassiopeia.

When it gets dark here

The dark hours here run 19:56 to 04:53 — 8 h 57 min of astronomical night, bracketed by sunset at 18:42 and sunrise at 06:07. Civil twilight ends at 19:04; anything earlier than that is wasted effort.

Local solar midnight, the true middle of the night, falls at 00:24 here rather than at 00:00: Asia/Kolkata runs 20 minutes ahead of mean solar time at 77.59°E. That offset is why the best hour on this page is not the hour you would guess from the clock.

What the Moon does here

The Moon is 0% illuminated and below the horizon for 10 of the 10 sampled dark hours, so moonlight subtracts essentially nothing here. Moonrise 06:29. Moonset 18:30. At the best hour the limiting magnitude reaches 6.50 — the reference sky's full value.

Why 63 an hour and not 100

The published ZHR of 100 assumes the radiant overhead and a sky at limiting magnitude 6.5. Here the radiant reaches 43.3° inside the dark window and the limiting magnitude at the best hour is 6.50, which with r = 2.2 gives 63.1 an hour. Entry speed is 58.8 km/s.

Hour by hour the modelled rate runs from 0.0 at 20:00 (radiant -15.4°) to 35.2 at 05:00 (radiant 43.3°), peaking at 63.1. That spread across 10 hours is why a "what time" answer beats a "how many" answer.

The stream comes from Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle and is listed as active 17 July to 24 August, so 13 August 2026 is the best night from Bengaluru rather than the only one.

Watching from around Bengaluru

Bengaluru, Karnataka is the 31st largest of the 300 cities covered here, with a population of 8.50 million at 920 m above sea level. The nearest other cities on the site are Kallakurichi (202 km SE), Coimbatore (229 km SSW), Chennai (291 km E) — close enough that the radiant altitudes barely change, far enough that sunset and moonrise do.

What this page does not know

Light-pollution data for this location is not connected yet. Rates on this page are computed against the reference rural sky the zenithal hourly rate is defined for (naked-eye limiting magnitude 6.5); they are not a claim about how bright the sky is where you are standing. Once the light-pollution layer is connected these figures will be recomputed for the local sky and will generally fall.

Cloud cover is a forecast, not a constant, so it is resolved when you load the tonight card and is deliberately absent from this prerendered page — the hourly table shows "unavailable" rather than assuming clear skies. Meteor outbursts, local terrain and building horizons are not modelled.

A single observer with an unobstructed horizon typically records 30–50% below the ideal-sky figure. Give your eyes twenty minutes to adapt, keep bright screens away, look about halfway up the sky rather than straight at the radiant, and count for a full hour before judging a shower.

Expected rate through the night

0 33 65 20:00 22:00 00:00 02:00 04:00

Meteors per hour for one observer under the reference sky. Local time, Asia/Kolkata. Cloud cover is not included — it is unknown at build time.

Hour by hour from Bengaluru

Hourly radiant altitude, Moon position, limiting magnitude and expected rate for Perseids from Bengaluru.
Local Radiant Moon alt Moon lit Sun alt Cloud Lim. mag Meteors/h
20:00 -15.4° -20.5° 0% -18.9° n/a 6.50 0.0
21:00 -10.7° -33.2° 0% -32.2° n/a 6.50 0.0
22:00 -4.6° -45.0° 0% -44.7° n/a 6.50 0.0
23:00 2.5° -55.0° 0% -55.2° n/a 6.50 4.3
00:00 10.2° -61.3° 0% -61.6° n/a 6.50 17.7
01:00 18.1° -61.3° 0% -60.9° n/a 6.50 31.1
02:00 25.9° -55.2° 0% -53.6° n/a 6.50 43.7
03:00 33.1° -45.2° 0% -42.6° n/a 6.50 54.6
04:00 39.1° -33.4° 0% -29.9° n/a 6.50 63.1
05:00 43.3° -20.7° 0% -16.4° n/a 5.66 35.2

"Cloud: n/a" means the forecast is not resolved on this prerendered page, not that the sky is clear.