Technologies

Look to the Sky: Bright Fireballs Appear During the Perseids Meteor Shower

Look up, and if you’re lucky, you could see dozens of meteors in the sky each hour.

Skygazers rejoice, the summer isn’t finished with delivering meteor showers to feast your eyes on. Last week saw dueling meteor showers taking over the sky, but the most popular meteor shower of the year won’t hit its peak until next week. The Perseids meteor shower is about to give you a real light show, provided you’re far enough away from light pollution to see it.

Perseids are known for their bright fireballs and plentiful meteors. The show started on July 17, and will run through Aug. 23.

The reason the Perseids meteor shower is so popular is twofold. First, it takes place in the summer, so going outside and watching it is less uncomfortable than other large meteor showers like Quadrantids, which takes place in wintery January.

The other reason is that it’s one of the most active meteor showers of the year. During its peak, the meteor shower is known to rain down as many as 100 meteors per hour, according to the American Meteor Society. These not only include your typical shooting stars, but also a higher chance for fireballs, which are meteors that explode as they enter orbit. Per NASA, fireballs tend to last longer than standard shooting stars and can come in a variety of different colors.

Perseids come to Earth courtesy of the 109P/Swift-Tuttle comet. Earth’s orbit around the sun brings it through Swift-Tuttle’s tail every year. The comet itself takes 133 years to orbit the sun. Its last perihelion — the point at which it’s the closest to the sun — was in 1992. It won’t be back until the year 2125. Until then, it leaves behind an excellent tail of dust and debris to feed us yearly meteor showers.

How to catch the Perseids meteor shower

The best time to view the Perseids is during its peak, which occurs on the evenings of Aug. 12 and 13. During this time, the shower will produce anywhere from 25 to 100 meteors per hour on average. However, since the shower officially lasts for over a month, you have a chance to see a shooting star on any given evening, provided that you’re far enough away from light pollution.

Thus, if you’re planning on watching this year’s Perseids during their peak, you’ll want to get out of the city and suburbs as far as possible. According to Bill Cooke, lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, folks in the city might see one or two meteors from the meteor shower per hour, which is pocket change compared to what those outside city limits might see.

Regardless, once you’ve arrived at wherever you want to watch the meteors, you’ll want to direct your attention to the radiant, or the point at which the meteors will appear to originate. Like all meteors, Perseids are named after the constellation from which they appear. In this case, it’s Perseus.

Per Stellarium’s free sky map, Perseus will rise from the northeastern horizon across the continental US on the evenings of Aug. 12 and 13. It’ll then rise into the eastern sky, where it’ll remain until after sunrise. So, in short, point yourself due east and you should be OK. Binoculars may help, but we recommend against telescopes since they’ll restrict your view of the sky to a very small portion, which may hinder your meteor-sighting efforts.

The American Meteor Society also notes that the moon may give viewers some difficulty. Perseids’ peak occurs just three days after August’s full moon, so the moon will still be mostly full. Thus, it is highly probable that light pollution from the moon may reduce the number of visible meteors by a hefty margin, depending on how things go.

Technologies

The iPhone 17 Pro ‘Feature’ I Want Most? More Colors Beyond Monochrome and Metal

Commentary: Why are Apple’s best phones restricted to black and white or silver and gold?

While we can all agree that what’s inside an iPhone is far more important than the outside, I still care a ton about how my smartphone looks. So with all the rumors swirling about the upcoming iPhone 17, one that caught my eye had nothing to do with specs or features. It simply said the iPhone 17 Pro could adopt color inspired by iOS 26’s Liquid Glass redesign — which, based on descriptions, may resemble some older Samsung phone hues. And I started dreaming about a world where Apple’s best phones look as fun as their lower-tier siblings.

For years, Apple has split its phones into two tiers: the «regular» iPhones and the Pro models. The former offer lower specs and prices with bolder colors, while the latter are pricier premium models with more subdued tones. The iPhone Pro and Pro Max typically come in black, white and a silver-gray — along with one trendier color that changes each year. For being the best that Apple offers, their colorways leave a lot to be desired, in my opinion.

But the iPhone 16 Pro comes in desert titanium, which is gold in all but name. The year before, the iPhone 15 Pro was available in a gray-blue (which I remember well, if not fondly, for not matching my vintage Bondi blue case). In 2022, the iPhone 14 Pro left white behind for gold and added a pastel purple alongside its black and silver hues — and so on.

Some people dropping $1,000-plus on a souped-up iPhone Pro want their device to look svelte, not superlative — elite over effervescent, cultured instead of colorful. I’m not that person. When I saw the iPhone 5C, I didn’t mind the cheaper-looking plastic case — the vibrant colors popped. I don’t think buying a premium phone should sentence you to a purgatory of dimmer hues.

And yes, there are those of you out there who don’t care what your phone looks like, since its colors will only briefly see the light of day before the handset is stuffed in its case to survive life’s inevitable bounces and falls. That’s completely valid, too.

So hearing that there’s a potential Liquid Glass color coming to the iPhone 17 Pro that we expect to launch (as we do every year) in September, I got tentatively excited. But there’s a big caveat: The rumor, sourced to Weibo-based leaker Instant Digital, didn’t include a photo or any imagery of this potential debut. Instead, the leaker suggested that (as translated by Google Translate) the iPhone 17 Pro color is expected to be white, but with a finish that shifts or changes subtly under different lighting conditions.

Where are my prismatic phone colors?

Apple introduced its Liquid Glass update during WWDC 2025 in June, unveiling a new design strategy for the iPhone 17 Pro line that emphasizes translucence and rounded icons to give iOS 26 a fresh UI facelift. App makers responded to the initial developer betas with disdain, criticizing the design’s distracting and disorienting lack of visual separation — icons in the Control Center overlay were hard to see. Thankfully, subsequent tweaks improved the redesign ahead of the recently launched iOS 26 public beta.

But how Liquid Glass’s design looks as an iPhone color is a bit harder to fathom. Instant Digital’s claim that it’ll be white but will shift with the light offers clues— and it could end up looking like some beloved colors from smartphones of yore.

For instance, the 2018 Samsung Galaxy S10 came in a rather fetching prism white color that shimmered when you rotated it in the light, giving off a pearlescence of subtle pinks, purples and blues. Watch how it compares to the standard cream-colored ceramic white hue in this video from Sakitech.

Contrast that with the more wildly prismatic «aura glow» color in the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 from the same year, which reflected every color of the rainbow. This bombastic choice sure was eye-catching, but I’d guess it’s too flamboyant for Apple. (And the beautiful glass back sure couldn’t stand up to a fall.)

True, Apple has dabbled in subtly shimmering colors — the iPhone 13 and 13 Mini came in midnight, a black so deep it was almost blue, reflecting hints of hidden hues underneath. That same year’s iPhones had another color, starlight, that was essentially the same effect in white.

But looking more closely at iPhone Pro designs from past years, I doubt we’ll see anything as vivacious as those Samsung hues — not only because Apple has avoided vibrant colors, but also because in recent years it’s used a frosted rear glass that blurs and mutes the color beneath. Just what we end up getting from a Liquid Glass color, if anything at all, is very uncertain given Apple’s design priorities.

But I’m hoping, just this once, the Pro phones get to show off a bit more of their stuff. And who knows — maybe that’ll be what finally sells us on the upcoming Liquid Glass redesign that’s set to change the look and feel of iOS, like it or not.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Aug. 3, #784

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Aug. 3, #784.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle could be tough. But the purple category is pretty fun, at least if you’re fascinated with musical groups and their names. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Do what I do.

Green group hint: Athletic games.

Blue group hint: New trend.

Purple group hint: Think music and animals.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Emulate.

Green group: Sports.

Blue group: Mania.

Purple group: Single animal in a creatively spelled band name.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is emulate. The four answers are copy, echo, mirror and parrot.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is sports. The four answers are cricket, golf, polo and squash.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is mania. The four answers are bug, craze, fad and fever.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is animal in a creatively spelled band name. The four answers are beetle, bird, gorilla and monkey. (The Beatles, The Byrds, Gorillaz and The Monkees.)

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Sunday, Aug. 3

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Aug. 3.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s Mini Crossword was a bit tricky. I always hate it when there are two connected clues, and you can’t really solve one without the other. Need the answers? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times’ games collection. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.