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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. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost ...
The Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight, Thursday, Dec. 12, into the early hours of Friday, Dec. 13. Most years, it boasts up to 120 meteors per hour; however, a nearly full moon will outshine ...
Most meteor showers originate from comets, but the Geminids come from 3200 Phaethon, an asteroid. The Geminids first appeared in the mid-1800s. ... They streak through the sky at a speed of 22 ...
The Perseids originate from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which takes 133 years to orbit the sun. Each year, the Earth passes through debris left behind by the comet, creating the meteor shower.
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 meteors in this shower appear to come from the radiant in the constellation Gemini (hence the shower's name). However, they can appear almost anywhere in the night sky, and often appear yellowish in hue. Well north of the equator, the radiant rises about sunset, reaching a usable elevation from the local evening hours onwards.
The annual Quadrantid meteor shower will return to the night sky on December 26 and will be at its most active as 2025 kicks off, according to the American Meteor Society.
Meteor paths appear at random locations in the sky, but the apparent paths of two or more meteors from the same shower will diverge from the radiant. The radiant is the vanishing point of the meteor paths, which are parallel lines in three-dimensional space, as seen from the perspective of the observer, who views a two-dimensional projection ...