Perseid meteor shower will create a celsetial display this weekend
The annual Perseid meteor shower will peak on the mornings, not the evenings, of August 12 and 13. It very typically produces about 60 meteors per hour, or several every few minutes, according to astronomers.
The Perseids are tiny bits of rock and debris from an old comet, which is named Swift-Tuttle after the astronomers who discovered it in 1862. Every year in early August, Earth passes through Swift-Tuttle's orbit and sweeps up some of this debris. As the tiny rocks encounter the thin upper atmosphere of the Earth, the air is heated to incandescence and we see a rapid streak of light.
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