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Named meteor showers recur at approximately the same dates each year. They appear to radiate from a certain point in the sky, known as the radiant, and vary in the speed, frequency and brightness of the meteors. As of January 2024, there are 110 established meteor showers. [1]
The Beta Taurids (β–Taurids) are an annual meteor shower belonging to a class of "daytime showers" that peak after sunrise. The Beta Taurids are best observed by radar and radio-echo techniques. The Beta Taurids are normally active from June 5 to July 18. [1]
The radiant also moves slightly from night to night against the background stars (radiant drift) due to the Earth moving in its orbit around the Sun. See IMO Meteor Shower Calendar 2017 (International Meteor Organization) for maps of drifting "fixed points". When the moving radiant is at the highest point, it will reach the observer's sky that ...
The Taurids are an annual meteor shower, associated with the comet Encke.The Taurids are actually two separate showers, with a Southern and a Northern component. The Southern Taurids originated from Comet Encke, while the Northern Taurids originated from the asteroid 2004 TG 10, possibly a large fragment of Encke due to its similar orbital parameters.
The Eta Aquariids are a meteor shower associated with Halley's Comet. The shower is visible from about April 19 to about May 28 each year with peak activity on or around May 5. Unlike most major annual meteor showers, there is no sharp peak for this shower, but rather a broad maximum with good rates that last approximately one week centered on ...
The Alpha Monocerotids is a meteor shower active from 15 to 25 November, with its peak occurring on 21 or 22 November. The speed of its meteors is 65 km/s, which is close to the maximum possible speed for meteors of about 73 km/s (see Specific energy#Astrodynamics).
In April 2021, CAMS published work that identified 14, and perhaps as many as 20, already known long-period comets as parent bodies of one of our meteor showers. Meteor showers were found for nearly all known comets approaching Earth orbit to 0.01 AU that have orbital periods in the 250 to 4,000 year range.
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.