This morning the most popular summer astronomical show starts: the meteor shower known as Perseids or Tears of San Lorenzo . The maximum activity will be reached tomorrow, Wednesday at sunset, when up to two hundred shooting stars can be observed every hour from points all over the country.
Some forty groups of amateur astronomers and other entities will carry out public observations in squares and emblematic places of the country at the Third Star Festival, organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía of the CSIC. For example, the AstroSantander association offers to observe this phenomenon from a schooner at sea. In Roquetas de Mar (Almería), the City Council and the Orion Astronomical Association have organized a night to see the Perseids lying on the sand on the beach. And AstroCuenca has prepared an observation from the Roman ruins of Valeria.
What we know as shooting stars are, in fact, dust particles of variable size that comets leave along their orbit as they revolve around the Sun. Specifically, the Perseids are produced when the Earth passes through the wake of Comet Swift -Tuttel .
