What is a shooting star?

A shooting star or meteor, are caused by tiny specks of Dust from space that burn up 65 to 135 km above Earth's surface as they plunge at terrific speeds into the upper atmosphere. Earth moves at 29 km/s around the Sun, and these bits of dust are travelling at about 40 km/s, so when they enter our atmosphere they have a combined speed of 30 to 70 km/s, The meteors we know as the Perseids enter the Earth’s atmosphere at 60 km/s.

We see it as a streak of light across the sky. Meteor shower happens when our planet passes through a group of meteoroids.

Meteor showers are generally named after the region of the sky ( constellation) where they seem to originate . Because of a trick of perspective, the dust that Earth encounters as it moves around the Sun seems to come from the same vanishing point, in much the same way that snowflakes appear to be coming at you from a “tunnel” when you are driving through a snowstorm at night. For instance, the famous Perseids, which we see around August 11-12, are so named because they seem to come from the constellation Perseus: they are caused by dust from the tail of comet Swift-Tuttle. In fact, there are many other such meteor showers that are not as well known as the Perseids.

Other meteor showers

The Leonids (with a radiant in the constellation Leo) occur around November 18

Geminids (constellation Gemini) are occur around December 14.

Ref :https://m.espacepourlavie.com