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

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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. It's believed that more than 20 kinds of dinosaurs 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 starting in mid-July and ending in late August. This year, the light show will peak in the predawn hours of August 12. Like most predictable meteor showers, it occurs 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 appear to originate out of the constellation Perseus.