#Perseid Meteors

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Perseid Meteors, Milky Way, and Stonehenge

[coopergriggs]

[vangoghcore]

by babaktafreshi

[without-ado]

Perseid Meteors over Stonehenge l Josh Dury l NASA APOD

[spacewonder19]

Auroras and Perseids © 1/2/3/4

[itscolossal]

Bisected by the Milky Way, a Stellar Image Captures the Perseid Meteor Shower Raining Down on Stonehenge

[amateurhouronmars]

pictures i took during the perseids last week

[theofficialastronomy101]

Some meteors from Perseids meteor shower a few weeks back

[imagine-darksiders]

On a date with myself rn watching the Perseid meteor shower from a field and every time one shoots by I’m like

‘Das Optimus Prime, baybee!!’

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Perseid Meteor Rain

[nijaded]

Perseid Meteor Shower over Stonehenge ☄️✨

[doeyedangel]

[without-ado]

Meteors and Red Sprites l Paul M Smith

[spacewonder19]

A perseid meteor and milky way © brianfulda

[wolfbatspace]

Perseid final

[useless-catalanfacts]

Every year from mid-July to late-August there is the meteor shower that many cultures of South-Western Europe call "the tears of Saint Lawrence" (les llàgrimes de Sant Llorenç in Catalan).

Why are they called that?

Saint Lawrence is a martyr venerated by Christians. It's believed that he was one of the victims of Roman emperor Valerian's persecution of Christians, and the Romans burned him on a grill and then burned him to death at a stake. He was killed on August 10th of the year 258, and for this reason August 10th is Saint Lawrence's Day.

The peak point in the meteor shower is on the days around August 10th, the day of Sant Lawrence's feast. People would see that, on the night he was remembered, there were comets in the sky. These comets are said to be the tears that Saint Lawrence cried when he was being burned on the grill. The tears, falling to the fire, come back on the sky every year.

What actually are these shooting stars?

Here is how NASA explains this phenomenon:

Meteors come from leftover comet particles and bits from broken asteroids. When comets come around the Sun, they leave a dusty trail behind them. Every year Earth passes through these debris trails, which allows the bits to collide with our atmosphere and disintegrate to create fiery and colorful streaks in the sky. The pieces of space debris that interact with our atmosphere to create the Perseids [=the tears of Saint Lawrence] originate from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Swift-Tuttle takes 133 years to orbit the Sun once. [... It] last visited the inner solar system in 1992.