Photos: People around the world watch stunning Perseid meteor shower

Perseid meteor above Fontainebleau, southern Paris. | The annual Perseid meteor shower reached its peak this weekend, sending bright 'shooting stars' streaking across the night sky.

A meteor streaks in Ronda, Spain. | Skywatchers, under clear dark skies, can expect to see anywhere from dozens up to 100 meteors an hour, zipping by at 60 kilometres per second.

A long exposure shows star trails behind the Lopez Mountain, Argentina. | Shooting stars and meteors are the same thing. A meteor is any piece of space rock, interstellar pebble or other chunk of debris that burns up in a planetary atmosphere. It's a meteoroid when it's still up in the air passing through space, and a meteorite if a small fragment of it survives and hits the ground.

A meteor streaks over the village of Kuklici, known for its hundreds of naturally formed stones, North Macedonia. | Known as the best meteor show, according to NASA, the Perseids show up in August when a debris field left by Comet Swift-Tuttle in 1992 barreled past Earth. Tiny particulates, the size of a grain of puffed rice, heat up as they are met by friction from Earth's atmosphere. That lights them ablaze. |

A meteor streaks in Fushe Stude, Albania. | Random shooting stars happen a couple times every night, and can make for magical moments if you happen to get lucky. But meteor showers, on the other hand, can be planned for and looked forward to because of their prolific nature and reliability.

A meteor streaks on the island of Lastovo, Croatia. | Meteor showers occur when Earth encounters a particularly dense pocket of debris, usually left in the wake of a since-departed comet or asteroid. We see the meteors at the same time every year, since we encounter the debris pocket at the same place in our annual orbit about the sun.

A view of the sky over the historical Phrygian Valley near Ihsaniye, in the Afyonkarahisar district. | Perseids are known for sometimes creating spectacular fireballs, meteors brighter than Venus, which produce explosive streaks of light that are longer, brighter and more persistent, according to the American Meteor Society.

Meteors streaking at Sophienalpe near Vienna, Austria. | The Perseids are named for the constellation Perseus - the constellation the meteors appear to come from - but Perseus isn't the source of the meteors.

Meteors streaking at Sophienalpe near Vienna, Austria. | It simply serves as a directional cue. Look to the northeastern part of the sky late at night: If you can't find Perseus, you may also see meteors by looking at dark patches in the sky.

Shooting stars streaking above Fontainebleau, southern Paris.

Perseid meteors above the southern Israel Negev desert.

In this long exposure photo, a streak appears in the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower at the Guadarrama mountains, near Madrid, in the early hours of Aug. 12, 2016.