The Perseid meteor shower put on a celestial fireworks show early this this week, dazzling sky-watchers around the world with as many as 70 shooting stars per hour at peak times.
In the above image, taken August 13, a lone Perseid meteor near the horizon joins a parade of stars circling the celestial pole marked by the North Star. This stunning shot is actually a composite of 250 individual images each 30 seconds long. (See our top tips for enjoying the Perseid meteor shower.)
Every mid-August, Earth slams into a cloud of debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle. This debris hits the atmosphere at high speeds, ionizing and producing streaks of light known as "shooting stars."
If you have a picture of the Perseid meteor shower and would like to submit it to National Geographic's Your Shot, our editors will consider adding it to this gallery. Please include the hashtag #meteor.
A flurry of Perseid meteors appear to radiate out from the Milky Way galaxy in the background of this composite image taken over many hours at Dream Lake in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park in the early morning hours of August 13, 2013.
The name of the shower comes from the region in the sky that the Perseid meteors appear to originate from, the northern Perseus constellation.
Photograph by Max Seigal, National Geographic Your Shot
The Perseids are considered the most prolific of all annual meteor showers when it comes to fireballs, with baseball to basketball sized stones hitting the atmosphere and producing unusually bright meteors that can cast shadows and produce lingering smoke trails.
Every Perseid meteor originates from the comet Swift-Tuttle, which swings through the inner solar system every 133 years. Each time it approaches the sun, the 6 mile (10 kilometer) wide icy interloper sheds tons of gas and dust that gets deposited in a stream of debris behind the comet.
Photograph by Doug Bisson, National Geographic Your Shot
During peak activity time for the Perseid shower, on August 12, 2013, a distant bright meteor plays peekaboo with passing clouds above the barren landscape near Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec.
A triad of shooting stars crisscross in front of the Milky Way band above the town of Lehi, Utah during the peak of the Perseid shower on the night of August 12, 2013.
“One heck of a night, watching the Perseid meteor shower and star gazing that was made special by the Milky Way stretching across the sky making for an amazing background,” wrote photographer Harish Narendar.
“While these little guys whizzed passed every other minute putting on a light show,” he wrote, “it was hardly an easy job getting them captured.”