The Perseid meteor shower photographed at the Dinosaur Museum of Erenhot in Inner Mongolia, China

Everyone's watching the Perseids

These dinosaurs are (nervously?) looking at the annual Perseid meteor shower, photographed at the Dinosaur Museum of Erenhot in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. Known as Dinosaur City, Erenhot gained attention in the 1920s when dino fossils were found there. Many different kinds of dinosaurs are thought to have lived in the area during the Cretaceous Period, around 70 million years ago.

One of the brighter meteor showers of the year, the Perseids occur every year between 17 July and 24 August. This year, the light show will peak on the night of 12 August. Like most predictable meteor showers, the Perseids occur when Earth's orbit intersects with the long elliptical path of one of the millions of comets that orbit the Sun (in this case, Comet Swift-Tuttle). It's called the Perseid meteor shower because the bulk of the meteors will appear to originate out of the constellation Perseus.