An amazing display from the Perseid meteor shower is expected in the coming days offering one of the best opportunities in years to see the night sky lit up with fragments of Comet Swift-Tuttle. A lack of moonlight this year will allow stargazers to easily view the annual event with the naked eye.

Every 133 years Comet Swift-Tuttle makes a pass through the inner solar system spewing dust and gravel behind it. According to NASA, the debris zone is so wide that the Earth spends weeks inside of it.

The fragments from the comet slam into our atmosphere at an astounding 144,000 miles per hour and light up the night sky as they burn up. Most of these meteoroids are the size of grains of sand but some can be as large as marbles. Called Perseids because they seem to fly out of the constellation Perseus in the northeast August sky, the end result is a bevy of shooting stars across the night sky. .

For the 2010 show, the moon will not be up during the pre-dawn hours allowing a very dark sky to show off the meteors as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere. At its peak, observers this year may see as many as 100 Perseids per hour. [ EXAMINER ]