Look out for those crackers in the sky

Looks out for those crackers in the sky Washington Come next week and you may as well enjoy a beautiful natural phenomenon. The Perseids meteor shower is going to be active from August 17-26. The annual celestial event is considered the best meteor shower, as many bright meteors and fireballs shoot through the sky making it easy for people to watch it from Earth. According to NASA, over 30 meteor showers occur annually and are observable from the Earth. As meteors fall towards the Earth, the resistance makes the space rocks extremely hot and, as meteorites pass through the atmosphere, they leave behind streaks of glowing gas that are visible to the observers and not the rock itself. The Perseids meteor shower peaks every year in mid-August. It was first observed over 2,000 years ago. The Perseids occur as the Earth runs into pieces of cosmic debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud of debris is about 27 km wide, and at the peak of the display, between 160 and 200 meteors streak through the Earth’s atmosphere every hour as the pieces of debris, travelling at some 2.14 lakh km per hour, burn up a little less than 100 km above the Earth’s surface. According to NASA, these meteor showers are best viewed from areas in the Northern Hemisphere in pre-dawn hours. Fun fact Meteors are bits of rock and ice that are ejected from comets as they manoeuvre around their orbits around the sun. When a meteor reaches the Earth, it is called a meteorite.