The Perseid meteor shower--the best of the...
The Perseid meteor shower--the best of the year--peaks this weekend, when an observer in a a dark location might see an average of one meteor per minute. Also called falling stars, meteors are dust grains, shed by comets long ago, that burn up as they fall through our atmosphere. They appear all over the sky but seem to radiate from the direction of Perseus, hence their name.
Source: John Mosley, Griffith Observatory
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