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Every year in August the night sky is lit up by the Perseid meteor shower and this year promises a bigger show than usual. Those dazzling streaks of light aren’t literally shooting stars, obviously, so we asked astronomer Jaymie Matthews what they really are.

What are shooting stars?

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Shooting stars are tiny specks of space dust, no bigger than a grain of sand, passing through the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere at 200,000 km/h, Matthews says. They are “tiny bullets” that generate enough heat to burn up about 100 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, leaving a trail up to 15 km long.

Where do they come from?

Perseid meteors are the debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle, a giant dirty snowball that sheds gas and dust on its orbit through our solar system as its surface evaporates from the influence of the Sun. This year we could see two to three times as many meteors per hour than in previous years, according to predictions by NASA.