Then at about 10 p.m., she flipped off the projector and pulled out a green laser pointer, drawing a resounding “Whoa!” from the audience as she pointed the gadget’s green line of light up at the stars forming the shapes of bears (Ursa Major and Minor), a teapot (Sagittarius), a swan (Cygnus).

As the occasional cloud veiled the stars, Goodman harnessed the audience’s energy to clear the sky: “I want this cloud to go away, so everybody blow!”

And it must have worked.

Just as the visitors craned their necks up to Cygnus flying through the Milky Way, a shooting star streaked the sky, just to the right of her green laser beam … and the crowd simultaneously burst out in awestruck joy: “Ooh!!!”

The enormous crowd gathered at the amphitheater were there for a star party on the first night of Shenandoah National Park’s Night Sky Festival. Park officials expect about 2,000 people to come this weekend for the event, which was launched in 2015 and is held annually during the Perseid meteor shower. This year’s festival — the first full-fledged event since 2019 after a pandemic hiatus — coincides with the peak of the Perseids.

The Perseids, which streak across the sky at 37 miles per second from mid-July to the end of August, are created by the dusty trail of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun every 133 years and last came through the solar system in 1992, NASA says.

The comet’s debris heats up when met by friction from the Earth’s atmosphere and lights up. The Perseids — named for the constellation Perseus, which is where the meteors appear to come from — are best viewed in the Northern Hemisphere in the hours before dawn, though it may be possible to see them as early as 10 p.m.

How to see the Perseid meteor shower this weekend, 2023’s best

The Night Sky Festival is being celebrated at various locations in the park from Friday to Sunday, free with park admission. Events include talks by a veteran astronaut, NASA and national park experts as well as amateur astronomers on topics ranging from defending earth from rogue asteroids to America’s largest known impact crater under the Chesapeake Bay.

Ranger-led star parties are being held nightly, but the real parties begin after 11 p.m. when the Perseids are most visible. When the Perseids peak Saturday night, dozens to nearly 100 shooting stars per hour will be visible under clear dark skies, according to NASA.

After Goodman’s talk Friday night, a line of cars left the amphitheater and drove down Skyline Drive past deer grazing on the roadside to mile 51, where skywatchers headed out to a crunching gravel road in Sky Meadows and the sky is visible from horizon to horizon. Couples, families and groups of friends mounted their cameras onto tripods and settled onto blankets and lawn chairs for a night of collective stargazing.

There were occasional grumbles as newcomers joined and mistakenly turned on white flashlights — momentarily blinding others, who had to reaccustom their eyes to the dark. But most people enjoyed the dark, relaxing into a happy stargazing bliss while listening to friendly chitchat around them.

“This is the first time we’ve come to Big Meadows for the meteor shower. It’s quite exciting,” said Claire Chen, 35, from Potomac, Md., who came with her husband, 5-year-old daughter and friends. “I did see some amazing ones — about five or six, which is pretty cool.”

The voices mellowed out after midnight, as sleepy stargazers stuck around at Big Meadows into the wee hours of Sunday morning, in hope of spotting just one more shooting star. The Perseids did not fail them.

Some seemed to be brief streaks at the edge of viewers’ peripheral vision. Others were brighter — fireballs created by larger particles that left behind them a green trail in the sky.

Marco Heydecker, 33, who is from Germany but lives in Silver Spring, has taken up astrophotography as a hobby and has traveled to dark sky locations around the world.

Focused on taking photos, he had missed seeing most of the night’s shooting stars.

“I saw two,” he said, laughing. “I hope I recorded them with my camera.”

This was his third visit to Shenandoah, and his second time at Big Meadows.

“This is a good spot because it’s dark for the East Coast,” he said. “It’s honestly one of the best dark skies close to Washington.”