Do you need a telescope to see the meteor shower?

Answer 1

No. In fact, using a telescope would almost guarantee that you would not see any meteors. Here's why.

Telescopes magnify a small area of the sky; the more powerful the telescope, the smaller the area. Telescopes are great for getting a close-up view of things that aren't moving too quickly; even then, with a big scope, you'll be re-centering it often as the Earth turns and the star/planet/comet/whatever drifts out of view.

Meteors can appear anywhere in the sky. They come VAGUELY from the constellation Perseus (for the Perseid meteors) or from other constellations that lend their names to the specific shower. Perseids enter the Earth's atmosphere at 130,000 miles per hour; they cross the sky in a second and either burn out or explode. There is NO WAY for you to see the incoming meteor, point the scope at it, and center; it's already gone. And since you don't know where the next meteor will appear, it would be like playing the lottery to point your telescope at a spot in the sky and just HOPE that you get lucky.

In a strong meteor shower, you might see a dozen in a minute, sometimes three or four together. Keep your head buried in a telescope, and I'll offer you a wager that you'll miss the best parts of the show.

Telescopes are great. But not for meteor showers.

Still determined to use your telescope during a meteor shower? Point it at the Moon! The Moon isn't THAT far away from Earth; the Moon is in the same meteor shower that the Earth is. Astronomers studying the Moon have watched hundreds of meteor strikes on the Moon over just the last year or so. Little meteors that make a nice light show in the sky aren't big enough to punch the Moon very hard, but there are those millions of millions of craters on the Moon, and each one was caused by a BIG impactor. There's chance - a SLIM chance - that you could see the explosion of a lunar impact.

Naked eye on the sky, or use your telescope on the Moon; either way, good hunting!