The Perseid meteor display is upon us. Over the course of the next four days, Earth will plough through the debris stream left by a giant comet that has been circling the sun since the birth of the solar system, The Guardian reported.

Each tiny cometary fragment that hits our atmosphere is usually no larger than a speck of dust. Yet it burns up with an incandescent display that we call a shooting star. If you want to get technical about it: a meteor.

This year, the Perseids will be visible from the northern hemisphere between 11 and 14 August.

Every Perseid you see was once in the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle, a 27-kilometre-wide iceberg in space. It spends most of its time in the outer solar system, reaching beyond the orbit of Pluto. Then, every 133 years, it dives past the sun, replenishing the supply of Perseids.