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A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories.
The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle that are usually visible from mid-July to late-August.The meteors are called the Perseids because they appear from the general direction of the constellation Perseus and in more modern times have a radiant bordering on Cassiopeia and Camelopardalis.
The Leonids are famous because their meteor showers, or storms, can be among the most spectacular. Because of the storm of 1833 and the developments in scientific thought of the time (see for example the identification of Halley's Comet), the Leonids have had a major effect on the scientific study of meteors, which had previously been thought to be atmospheric phenomena.
The Lyrid meteor shower was first observed about 2,700 years ago in China. Here’s how you can see it above eastern Washington skies. One of the oldest-known meteor showers can be seen near Tri ...
The Ursids are an unusual annual meteor shower — its radiant, the point from which the meteors appear to originate, is not a zodiac constellation. Instead, the Ursids appear to originate from ...
These meteors originate from comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun every 133 years and was last seen in 1992. Swift-Tuttle is large, with a nucleus measuring 16 miles wide. Swift-Tuttle is ...
A meteor that does not point back to the known radiant for a given shower is known as a sporadic and is not considered part of that shower. Shower meteors may appear a short time before the radiant has risen in the observer's eastern sky. The radiant in such cases is above the horizon at the meteor's altitude.
Unusually bright meteors, fireballs can surpass 1 meter (3.3 feet) in diameter and are brighter than Venus — according to NASA and Cooke. Venus is one of the most luminous objects in the night sky.