Astronomy Ireland are urging everyone to go outdoors this weekend to witness a free celestial fireworks display.
The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, but for several nights either side of this date the display should be well worth watching. People can start viewing from 11pm, but the best viewing comes after midnight.
David Moore, chairman of Astronomy Ireland, said: "This event can be seen from most of the planet so we want to publish a list of Irish sightings in our magazine so we are asking members of the public to e-mail perseid_at_astronomy.ie and tell us simply how many they saw and how long they watched.
"We will publish all reports in our magazine as a permanent record of the 2005 Perseids over Ireland."
Meteors - or shooting stars - are tiny pieces of dust that have fallen off a comet - Comet Swift-Tuttle in this case. When they hit Earth's atmosphere at 59km per second (130,000mph) they burn up in a short fiery flash usually lasting less than one second.
Each piece of dust is typically the size of a grain of sand and the "burning up" takes place 100 kilometres above the ground. Larger dust particles are rare but give much brighter meteors which can often leave a glowing trail behind them for several seconds called trains.
Comet Swift-Tuttle was last seen in 1992 and is not due back until 130 years after that.