Perseids from Dongguan in 2026

Worth planning for

Perseids: worth planning for, cloud permitting

Plan for 02:00–05:00 local time: the radiant reaches 53° above the horizon, the Moon is only 0% lit and out of the way, and astronomical darkness lasts 8 h 21 min. Under the sky measured here that rates about 15 meteors an hour — cloud cover is a runtime fact this page cannot know, so treat it as the ceiling, not a promise.

Maximum (local)
10:00 · 13 August 2026
Night of
12 August 2026
Best window
02:00–05:00
Peak rate
15.3/h
Radiant (best)
52.8° NNE
Moon
0% lit
Cloud cover
unavailable

Local to Dongguan

Sunset
18:59
Astronomical dusk
20:19
Astronomical dawn
04:40
Sunrise
06:00
Dark hours
8 h 21 min
Radiant culminates
06:11 · 55.1°
Solar midnight
00:30
Latitude
23.0°N

Rates are computed for Dongguan's own measured sky brightness, 18.0 mag/arcsec² — equivalent to Bortle 8 skies. Derived from satellite night-lights data; the method is published.

Perseids from Dongguan: the short answer

For Dongguan, Guangdong, Perseids maximum lands at 10:00 on 13 August 2026. Culmination 06:11 at 55.1° — that is 82% of what the same stream would deliver with the radiant overhead — and the ceiling on the rate is 15.3 meteors an hour.

That ranks it 2nd of twelve from Dongguan this year, behind the Geminids (21.8/h).

The radiant track over this city

The radiant rises at 21:20 bearing NNE, culminates 55.1° up at 06:11 towards north (0°), and sets at 15:00. It lies inside Cassiopeia. The rate scales with the sine of that altitude, so 55.1° buys you 82% of a zenith radiant.

When it gets dark here

Dongguan loses the Sun at 18:59 and gets it back at 06:00. True astronomical darkness — the only part that counts for faint meteors — runs 20:19 to 04:40, 8 h 21 min out of 11 h 1 min of night.

Local solar midnight, the true middle of the night, falls at 00:30 here rather than at 00:00: Asia/Shanghai runs 25 minutes ahead of mean solar time at 113.75°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 06:16. Moonset 18:46. At the best hour the limiting magnitude reaches 4.50 — the full value for this city's measured sky.

Why 15 an hour and not 100

Converting ZHR 100 into something useful for Dongguan means multiplying by sin(52.8°) and dividing by 2.2 raised to (6.5 − 4.50). That lands at 15.3 meteors an hour, from fast 58.8 km/s entries.

Hour by hour the modelled rate runs from 0.0 at 20:00 (radiant -6.0°) to 5.0 at 05:00 (radiant 52.8°), peaking at 15.3. 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 Dongguan rather than the only one.

Watching from around Dongguan

Dongguan, Guangdong is the 22nd largest of the 300 cities covered here, with a population of 9.64 million at 1 m above sea level. The nearest other cities on the site are Guangzhou (52 km WNW), Shenzhen (62 km SSE), Zhongshan (67 km SW) — close enough that the radiant altitudes barely change, far enough that sunset and moonrise do.

What this page does not know

Rates on this page are computed against this city's own measured sky brightness, derived from satellite night-lights data. That is a calculated brightness for the point directly overhead, not a survey of your street: a park on the edge of town and a lit car park in the centre share the same figure here and will not look the same. It is also zenith-only, while the Bortle scale describes the whole sky from horizon to horizon.

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 10 20 20:00 22:00 00:00 02:00 04:00

Meteors per hour for one observer under this city's measured sky. Local time, Asia/Shanghai. Cloud cover is not included — it is unknown at build time.

Hour by hour from Dongguan

Hourly radiant altitude, Moon position, limiting magnitude and expected rate for Perseids from Dongguan.
Local Radiant Moon alt Moon lit Sun alt Cloud Lim. mag Meteors/h
20:00 -6.0° -16.1° 0% -13.9° n/a 2.95 0.0
21:00 -1.8° -27.6° 0% -26.2° n/a 4.50 0.0
22:00 3.8° -37.9° 0% -37.3° n/a 4.50 1.4
23:00 10.5° -46.2° 0% -46.2° n/a 4.50 3.8
00:00 17.9° -51.0° 0% -51.5° n/a 4.50 6.3
01:00 25.7° -51.1° 0% -51.5° n/a 4.50 9.0
02:00 33.7° -46.5° 0% -46.2° n/a 4.50 11.5
03:00 41.2° -38.4° 0% -37.3° n/a 4.50 13.6
04:00 47.9° -28.2° 0% -26.2° n/a 4.50 15.3
05:00 52.8° -16.6° 0% -13.9° n/a 2.98 5.0

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