On June 28 and 29, the Southern and Northern Delta Aquariids meteor showers are going to make every wish come true. They'll be best visible from the southern hemisphere and will reach their peak in mid-August, along with the Perseids meteor shower.
The 2 meteor showers will be visible almost simultaneously and will occur in the same region of the night sky.
The Delta Aquariids come from the Skat star, located in the constellation Aquarius. The maximum amount of shooting stars is between 15-20 an hour and will be most clearly visible about 2 hours before dawn.
Shooting stars are a phenomenon where hard particles about the size of a grain of rice enter Earth's atmosphere and burn up during descent. While they burn, they leave behind a fiery trail in the sky that's visible to the human eye.
It takes them between 1-3 seconds to burn out. Long ago, the phenomenon was thought to be an actual star and hence its name today - shooting stars.
Meteorites begin to burn up about 62 mi (100 km) from Earth's surface and by the time they reach 25 mi (40 km) of altitude they will have completely burned out.
They enter Earth's atmosphere at speeds of anywhere between 12 - 50 miles per second and depending on their chemical composition, their color during entry can be yellow, white, red and even green.
According to the belief, if you make a wish when you see a shooting star it will come true.
Most meteor streams have up to 40 meteorites fall per hour, while in rare cases they can be twice that number. When there are more than 1000 shooting stars falling per hour, the phenomenon is called a meteor shower.
Meteorites are pieces of rock, most of which come from the tails of comets, while some are the remains left over from collisions between asteroids. About 95% of shooting stars come from the asteroid belt located between the planetary orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
