This is the best time of year to take up astronomy as a hobby. Sit outside at night in an old beach chair with a can of soda and look up. There is no better time of year, when it comes to temperature. A little bug spray may help. The last nights of July and the first nights of August are ideal. Amateur astronomy is so easy.

You don’t even have to know the stars by name to appreciate the scene overhead and the placement of the Earth in its orbit around the sun in a gigantic galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Shooting stars, falling stars as they are also called, are routine. This is the season of night time meteor showers that require a low level of expertise. You don’t even need binoculars, just a level of curiosity and a big bag of wonder. At least two meteor showers are underway, which means you have a pretty good chance of seeing an occasional shooting star crossing the sky.

The Delta Aquarids peak Thursday night, and it is likely you will still see a shooting star in the nights ahead. The Perseid meteor shower, which comes between August 11 and 12, has a reputation for being a shower without defined limits that overflows and spreads its meteors far earlier and later than the radiant date. When looking at night, if you see three meteors in an hour of stargazing you are doing well.