Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's -- a meteor shower.

Specifically, it is the Perseid meteor show, one of the more spectacular cosmic light shows on view this year, and Mike Cobb wants people to get a good, long look.

"It's the biggest one of the year," he said.

Cobb, chairman of the physics department at Southeast Missouri State University, and his family will be out late Sunday night to early Monday morning watching the meteor shower.

Watching meteors isn't difficult, and spectators won't need any special equipment, he said.

"Go out where it's dark, in the country preferably, and basically look straight up," he said.

The meteors will be coming from the northeast, Cobb said. "But they basically streak pretty much anywhere."

The best time for viewing will be between midnight and about 4 a.m. Monday.

The Perseids -- considered one of the most reliable meteor showers -- are believed to have originated in the Perseus Constellation, for which they were named.

Meteors are particles of dust or rock that enter Earth's atmosphere at high rates of speed.

Friction heats the rock and surrounding atmosphere, vaporizing the rock, ionizing, or exciting, atmospheric gases. That ionization produces the glowing trail streaking across the sky.

The Perseids were produced by dust from the Comet-Swift Tuttle, last seen in 1992.

"We think these are old comet orbits, and the Earth is passing through those orbits," Cobb said. "The dust comes down into the atmosphere and looks like shooting stars."

Spectators will be busy if they try to keep track of all the meteors, he said.

"At it's best, you can see about one a minute," he said.

In 1991, the Perseids produced about 350 meteors per hour, with many bright meteors and fireballs.

The St. Louis Science Center is advising skywatchers to expect to see 20 to 50 meteors per hour in suburban areas. More will be visible in rural areas because there will be less competing light from houses, streetlights and so on.