If you'd like to wish upon a shooting star, the Perseid meteor shower — a celestial show that starts July 14 and lasts until August 24 — might be your best bet. Every summer the Northern Hemisphere is blanketed with a gleaming barrage of "shooting stars," or meteors, tiny bits of space rock and dust that burn up in Earth's atmosphere. The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most famous meteor showers, as the night sky lights up with burning meteors when Earth passes through the dusty remnants left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle.