Every August, Earth drives through the debris trail of a comet that last passed by in 1992. Shooting stars are litter — and they arrive on a schedule.
Rivers of grit
Comets are messy travelers. Each pass near the Sun boils dust and grit off their surface, and that debris keeps orbiting along the comet's path like a river of sand in space. A meteor shower happens when Earth's orbit crosses one of those rivers — the same dates every year, which is why our calendar can promise the Perseids each August. The comet itself is usually nowhere near; the Perseids' parent, Swift–Tuttle, won't return until 2126.
A grain of sand at 59 km/s
Most meteors are the size of a sand grain. They shine because of speed: hitting the atmosphere at tens of kilometers per second, they compress and heat the air ahead of them until it glows. The streak you see is a column of hot air a hundred kilometers up — the grain itself vanishes in a fraction of a second. Almost nothing from a shower ever reaches the ground.
How to actually see them
No telescope — meteors cross too much sky. Find darkness, lie back, give your eyes twenty minutes, and look generally up rather than at the radiant. The 'up to N per hour' rates in our calendar are ideal-conditions ceilings (dark sky, radiant overhead); city viewing might show a fifth of that. The Moon matters more than anything: a bright moon washes out faint meteors, which is why serious observers check the phase first — both live on our tracker.