Phillip Muniz, age 10, of San Diego, Calif., for his question:

When will we have another rain of stars?

Every clear night We can See a few meteors darting like bright sparks across the starry heavens. We call them shooting stars, even though most of them are no bigger than grains of sand. Once in a while We get a swarm of metears that looks for all the world like a rain of falling stars. We may call them meteor swarms or meteor showers. Experts think that they are specks of dusty debris left behind by a passing comet.

A number of meteor showers occur on schedule at certain times of the year. On Jan. 2 and 3 We get a starry shower that seems to fall from near the constellation Draco, the Dragon. We get one around April 20 and another during the first Week of May. Another starry shower is due to fall from Aug. 10 to 13. It will appear to come from the northeast near the brilliant Square of Pegasus.