Stargazers Look Up And Make A Wish

Want to make a wish on a shooting star? Sunday and Monday nights will be the best time to view the annual Perseid meteor shower and conditions are close to perfect with just a crescent moon to ensure a dark night sky.   

These shooting stars, which NASA rather unromantically describes as "interplanetary dust," are actually fragments of the Swift-Tuttle comet which orbits the Sun every 130 years. Friction lights up the fragments as they enter the gas of Earth's atmosphere. 

Each fragment can be as small as a dime or as wide as a human hair but combined, they amount to 10 to 40 tons of material that enters our atmosphere on a daily basis. 

The Perseid meteor shower offers a spectacular light show, with as many as 50 meteors an hour streaking across the dark night sky after midnight. So be on the lookout and don't forget to make a wish!