Meteor Showers

What You're Actually Seeing

Meteor showers happen when Earth passes through streams of debris left behind by comets — or occasionally asteroids — as they orbit the Sun. The debris particles, most no larger than a grain of sand, slam into Earth's upper atmosphere at tens of kilometers per second and burn up, creating brief streaks of light.

Each shower appears to radiate from a single point in the sky called the radiant — named for the constellation it appears to come from. The Perseids appear to come from Perseus. The Leonids from Leo. This is perspective, not origin. All the meteors are travelling parallel paths but the geometry makes them converge on a single point.