In the coming days, be sure to look to the skies, as one of the most active and impressive meteor showers is taking place: the Perseids. And Canada is in a prime viewing location.
This composite image shows several Perseid meteors over the course of a night near Mount Forest, Ont.
But there are larger bodies left over from our formation: asteroids and comets. And every so often, Earth passes through the stream of debris they leave behind as they orbit the sun. This is what gives us meteor showers, a time where far more of that dust burns up in our atmosphere, creating a wonderful light show.
"The Perseids this year are ideal from a sky standpoint," said Peter Brown, professor and Canada Research Chair at Western University's physics and astronomy department in London, Ont. Like most meteor showers, the Perseids gets its name from its radiant, or the constellation from which the meteors appear to be originating, in this case, Perseus.
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