# Meteor shower <!-- SOLSIM:BEGIN g31 — Solar System explorer state (hand-built on wt-core, specs/solar/); do not hand-edit inside --> **Microsim — three.js (Wikitube framework):** *Interplanetary dust in the Solar System explorer* <div class="wt-sim" data-src="https://wikitube-3d-microsims.netlify.app/solar/Solar_System.html?obj=dust&embed=1" data-title="Interplanetary dust in the Solar System explorer"></div> *The Solar System explorer locked on this article's state (`?obj=dust`); every object and population of the [[PORTAL_Solar_System|Solar System portal]] has its own state in the same scene.* <!-- SOLSIM:END --> *Try: press o to hide the orbit lines and find the narrow stream of dust points strung along Comet Encke's orbit, the source of the Taurids; set the speed to 1 month/s and watch Earth come round to the stretch of that stream it crosses each autumn, when the Southern Taurids peak; then drag to an edge-on view and compare the tilted stream with the broad zodiacal dust around it.* A **meteor shower** is an episode in which many meteors appear to fan out from a single point in the sky over a night or a few nights. Each meteor is the flash of a [[Meteoroid|meteoroid]] burning up in the [[Atmosphere_of_Earth|atmosphere of Earth]]; in a shower, the meteoroids belong to one stream of debris, shed by a [[Comet|comet]] or occasionally an [[Asteroid|asteroid]], that [[Earth]] crosses at the same point of its [[Orbit|orbit]] every year.[^jenniskens2006] Almost all shower meteoroids are smaller than sand grains and are destroyed high in the air. Exceptional displays of at least 1,000 meteors an hour are called meteor storms, the Leonids being the best-known source.[^jenniskens2006] The IAU Meteor Data Center lists more than 900 proposed showers, of which about 100 are considered established.[^mdc][^jopek2017] Until the 19th century meteors were widely thought to be an atmospheric phenomenon. The Leonid storm of 1833 showed that they arrive from space as a swarm, and in 1866 Giovanni Schiaparelli tied the Leonids to a comet's orbit.[^olmsted1833][^sheehan2022] Modern forecasts follow individual dust trails released by a comet at particular returns, and can predict outbursts years ahead.[^jenniskens2006] The explorer at the top of this page shows the zodiacal dust of the inner [[PORTAL_Solar_System|Solar System]] with one stream picked out, the debris along the orbit of Comet Encke that Earth meets as the Taurid showers. ## Historical developments Showers were recorded long before they were understood. Chronicles from China, Korea and Japan preserve centuries of dated meteor observations that include recognisable showers, and the Lyrids have the longest recorded history, with Chinese reports from 687 BCE.[^yang2005][^uso2023] Medieval Arab chroniclers noted showers, and a manuscript from Timbuktu records one in August 1583.[^rada1992][^holbrook2008][^abraham2007] Their cause was contested. Antoine Lavoisier suggested in 1789 that dust lifted into the upper air might be fused by lightning into fiery lumps. In 1794 Ernst Chladni argued instead that fireballs and iron meteorites come from space, which many scientists at first rejected, partly because it clashed with the view, taken from [[Isaac_Newton|Isaac Newton]], that space between the planets was empty.[^marvin2006][^williams2002] The decisive event was the Leonid storm of 12–13 November 1833, seen across North America east of the Rocky Mountains. Estimates range from more than 100,000 meteors an hour at the peak to over 200,000 across nine hours.[^rao2010][^nasa-leonidmac] Denison Olmsted of Yale collected reports and published them in 1834: the display was brief, was not seen in Europe, and its meteors radiated from a point in Leo that moved with the stars, which meant the particles came from a cloud in space.[^olmsted1833][^olmsted1836] Schiaparelli showed in letters to Angelo Secchi in late 1866 that the Leonids share the orbit of Comet Tempel–Tuttle, and so that meteoroids are cometary debris.[^sheehan2022][^williams2002] Biela's Comet reinforced the point. It split in 1846; in 1868 Edmund Weiss calculated that Earth would cross its orbit in 1872, and that year a strong shower, now the Andromedids, appeared.[^williams1992] Prediction came later. In the 1890s George Johnstone Stoney and Arthur Downing, and independently Adolf Berberich, computed how [[Jupiter]] would move the Leonid dust and concluded, correctly, that the expected storms of 1898–1899 would miss Earth.[^jenniskens2006b] Donald Yeomans reviewed the Leonid record against the comet's orbit in 1981 and showed that the densest dust lies mostly behind and outside the comet's path.[^yeomans1981] In 1985 E. D. Kondrat'eva and E. A. Reznikov identified the ejection years of dust responsible for past Leonid storms.[^jenniskens2006b] Peter Jenniskens predicted the 1995 Alpha Monocerotid outburst from its dust trail, and David Asher and Robert McNaught, and separately Esko Lyytinen, applied the dust-trail method to the Leonid storms of 1999–2002.[^jenniskens1997][^armagh1999][^ras1999] Jenniskens published trail encounters for the next 50 years in 2006, and Jérémie Vaubaillon updates predictions at the IMCCE in Paris.[^jenniskens2006b][^imcce] ## Radiant point Meteoroids in a stream travel on nearly parallel paths at the same speed. Seen from the ground, their trails therefore seem to spread from one point, the radiant, just as parallel rails seem to meet at a point on the horizon. The radiant keeps its place among the stars and so rises and sets with them during the night, and it shifts slowly from night to night as Earth moves along its orbit, an effect called radiant drift.[^observatory1901][^mcintosh1932] Entry speed depends on how the stream meets Earth, and it sets the [[Kinetic_energy|kinetic energy]] each grain brings into the [[Atmosphere_of_Earth|atmosphere]]. Earth moves at 29.8 km/s.[^nasa-fs] Taurid meteoroids enter the air at about 27 km/s, while the Leonids, on a retrograde orbit, meet it almost head-on at about 71 km/s.[^jenniskens2006] A body at Earth's distance can move no faster than √2 × 29.8 ≈ 42 km/s and still be bound to the [[Sun]], so the Leonid speed is close to the head-on maximum of 42 + 30 = 72 km/s (derived). Faster meteors light up higher: the ionised trails of shower meteors begin at heights of about 70 km and above, and their light curves record the rate at which each meteoroid ablates.[^lukianova2018][^koten2004] Silicate meteoroids begin to melt at about 1,800 K.[^vondrak2008] How many meteors an observer sees depends on the radiant's altitude h. The flux through the air is spread over an area larger by 1/sin h, so the visible rate falls roughly as sin h: half the maximum when the radiant stands 30° up, since sin 30° = 0.5 (derived). The long, bright trails appear 30–60° away from the radiant.[^lunsford2009] Most showers are better after midnight, when the observer's side of Earth faces forward along its orbit and sweeps up more meteoroids; the hours just before dawn balance a high radiant against a brightening sky.[^lisle2012] ## Naming A shower is named after the constellation, or the bright star, nearest its radiant at the time of maximum. The Latin genitive ending is replaced by "-id" or "-ids", so meteors from near Delta Aquarii are the Delta Aquariids, those from Perseus the Perseids and those from Gemini the Geminids.[^jopek2023] The International Astronomical Union keeps the list. Its Meteor Data Center records every proposed shower and gives each a number and a three-letter code, and its working group on shower nomenclature decides when a shower counts as established and approves its name.[^jopek2011][^jopek2017] The IAU revised these naming rules in 2022, and the new rules were published in 2023.[^jopek2023] Some traditional names survive from constellations no longer recognised: the Quadrantids take theirs from Quadrans Muralis, a constellation long since absorbed into Boötes.[^jenniskens2006] ## Origin of meteoroid streams A shower begins when a parent body, usually a [[Comet|comet]] and sometimes an [[Asteroid|asteroid]], sheds solid debris along its orbit. Fred Whipple's 1951 model of the comet nucleus as a conglomerate of ices and rock, the "dirty snowball", explained how.[^whipple1951] As the ices, mostly [[Water|water]] but also carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other volatiles, warm near the [[Sun]] and sublimate, the escaping gas drags grains of dust, sand and pebble size off the surface. Small grains vastly outnumber large ones, and each passage near perihelion releases a new batch.[^wesolowski2020] The grains leave the nucleus at speeds of metres to tens of metres per second, tiny beside the comet's orbital speed of tens of kilometres per second, so they stay close to its orbit and spread along it as a meteoroid stream or dust trail.[^fulle2004] This material is distinct from the gas tail and the finest dust of the tail, which radiation pressure blows away quickly. Jenniskens has argued that most short-period showers come not from this steady outgassing but from rare episodes in which a mostly dormant comet breaks apart.[^jenniskens2006] The fragments soon crumble into dust, sand and pebbles and form a dense stream. The Quadrantids are traced to a break-up of the object now catalogued as 2003 EH1 about 500 years ago, possibly the comet C/1490 Y1 seen in 1490.[^jenniskens2004][^micheli2008] The Geminids come from 3200 Phaethon, an object that looks like an asteroid, and the stream is estimated to be about 1,000 years old.[^marsden1983][^jenniskens2006] ## Dynamical evolution of meteoroid streams Once released, grains do not stay in a compact cloud. Soon after Whipple's model, Miloš Plavec showed that grains freed at low speed drift mainly ahead of or behind the comet after one orbit, with little sideways spread, because a small change in speed alters the orbital period.[^jenniskens2006b] A worked case shows the scale. Comet 55P/Tempel–Tuttle has a semi-major axis of 10.3 AU and perihelion at 0.976 AU.[^jpl-sbdb] By the vis-viva equation it passes perihelion at about 41.6 km/s, and a grain released there 10 m/s faster has a semi-major axis larger by about 0.1 AU; since by [[Kepler's_laws_of_planetary_motion|Kepler's third law]] the period scales as a^(3/2), its 33-year orbit lengthens by about half a year (derived).[^openstax] Such trails from individual returns show up in mid-infrared images of comets.[^sykes1992] The explorer draws only one stream, Encke's, and its points are ILLUSTRATIVE: a sample laid along the comet's orbit from the JPL Small-Body Database, not a model of real trails from particular returns.[^jpl-sbdb] The planets then steer each trail. Their [[Gravity|gravity]] shifts where it crosses Earth's orbit, so most years a given trail misses Earth and occasionally it hits squarely; this was first shown with the 1995 Alpha Monocerotids.[^jenniskens1997][^jenniskens1997b] Grains trapped in a mean-motion [[Resonance|resonance]] with Jupiter stay bunched in a filament rather than spreading out.[^soja2011] Close passes by Earth speed up some grains and slow others, opening gaps in the trail at its next return, and Jupiter's pull at the far end of a short-period orbit, where grains move slowest, can fold a trail into clumps and braids.[^jenniskens2006b] Radiation pressure acts more on small grains than large ones, pushing them onto slightly wider orbits, so some encounters are rich in faint meteors and others in bright ones. Over many orbits these effects widen trails into a broad stream that Earth meets every year at a similar rate, the annual shower. Collisions and further dispersion finally merge grains into the general [[Interplanetary_dust_cloud|interplanetary dust]], whose meteors, arriving from all directions, are called sporadic.[^jenniskens2006b] ## Meteor storm A meteor storm is a shower producing at least 1,000 meteors an hour over [[Earth]], about ten times the best annual rates.[^starwalk2024][^cappucci2025] Observers have compared storms to stars falling like snow or to fireworks. The Leonids are the classic source. Storms follow returns of their parent [[Comet|comet]], Tempel–Tuttle, every 33 years or so, and have been recorded in 1799, 1833, 1866–1867, 1966 and 1999–2002.[^jenniskens2001] The 1833 and 1966 storms were by far the strongest, each well above 100,000 meteors an hour at peak.[^cappucci2025][^jenniskens2001] In 1966 observers in the western United States counted about 40 meteors a second for a short time, equal to some 144,000 an hour (derived).[^cappucci2025] No Leonid storm is expected before about 2034, and possibly not until 2099.[^cappucci2025] The Draconids, from Comet 21P/Giacobini–Zinner, stormed in 1933 and 1946 with rates of thousands an hour.[^kronk-draconids][^mcfarland2011] Forecasts have been made for a possible Draconid storm in 2098 and, by Lyytinen, a strong Perseid outburst in August 2028 with at least 1,000 meteors an hour.[^starwalk2024][^space2024] ## Famous meteor showers The strength of a shower is given as its zenithal hourly rate (ZHR): the number of meteors a single observer would see in an hour under a clear, dark sky with the radiant overhead. Actual counts are nearly always lower, because the radiant is lower and the sky brighter. Younger streams are clumpy, so their rates vary from year to year; older ones are smoother. One compilation lists the strongest regular showers as the Perseids and Geminids, each with a ZHR of about 75, and the Quadrantids at about 60.[^nicolson1999] ### Perseids and Leonids The Perseids, from Comet 109P/Swift–Tuttle, are the most reliable shower in most years, peaking about 12 August at more than one meteor a minute.[^reynolds2010] The Leonids peak around 17 November. In ordinary years they are weaker than the Perseids, but at intervals of about 33 years they can storm, as described above.[^nicolson1999][^jenniskens2001] The difference reflects the two parent orbits: Swift–Tuttle's 133-year orbit has left a broad, mature stream, while Tempel–Tuttle's shorter one still leaves compact trails that Earth may hit or miss.[^jpl-sbdb] ### Other meteor showers The IAU keeps the official list of names.[^mdc] Some established showers and their parent bodies: | Shower | Peak | Parent body | |---|---|---| | Quadrantids | early January | 2003 EH1, possibly comet C/1490 Y1[^jenniskens2004][^micheli2008] | | Lyrids | late April | Comet C/1861 G1 (Thatcher)[^uso2023] | | Eta Aquariids | early May | Comet 1P/Halley[^jenniskens2006] | | Alpha Capricornids | late July | Comet 169P/NEAT[^jenniskens2010] | | Perseids | mid-August | Comet 109P/Swift–Tuttle[^jenniskens2006] | | Kappa Cygnids | mid-August | Minor planet 2008 ED69[^jenniskens2008] | | Draconids | early October | Comet 21P/Giacobini–Zinner[^kronk-draconids] | | Orionids | late October | Comet 1P/Halley[^jenniskens2006] | | Southern and Northern Taurids | November | Comet 2P/Encke and related bodies[^porubcan2006] | | Leonids | mid-November | Comet 55P/Tempel–Tuttle[^yeomans1981] | | Phoenicids | early December | Comet 289P/Blanpain[^jenniskens2005] | | Geminids | mid-December | 3200 Phaethon[^marsden1983] | | Ursids | late December | Comet 8P/Tuttle[^jenniskens2002] | [[Halley's_Comet|Halley's Comet]] feeds two showers because Earth passes near its orbit twice a year, once in May and once in October. ## Extraterrestrial meteor showers Any body with enough atmosphere can have meteors, and any body crossed by a stream can be struck by it. The [[Moon]] meets the same streams as Earth. Without air to burn them up, meteoroids hit its surface, and a strong stream may briefly boost the thin sodium atmosphere that trails away from the Moon.[^hunten1991] NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center monitors the flashes of light from impacts on the lunar night side, shower-related or not.[^nasa-lunar] [[Mars]] has showers of its own, different from Earth's because it crosses different streams. Its surface air is thin, with a pressure about 0.6% of Earth's (derived), but at the heights where meteors burn up the two atmospheres are more alike, and Martian meteors are expected to look similar, if slightly slower and fainter.[^nasa-fs][^christou2007] On 7 March 2004 a camera on the Spirit rover recorded a streak identified as a meteor, probably from a stream of comet 114P/Wiseman–Skiff.[^selsis2005] The debris of Halley's Comet is predicted to produce showers on Venus and Mars as well as on Earth.[^christou2007] Meteors have been discussed for most bodies with an atmosphere. Impacts from the stream of Comet Encke may supply the calcium seen around [[Mercury_(planet)|Mercury]], and meteors have been considered for [[Venus]], [[Titan_(moon)|Titan]], [[Triton_(moon)|Triton]] and [[Pluto]].[^killen2015][^christou2007][^lorenz2006][^pesnell2004][^kosarev2002] [[Jupiter]] has been hit by larger bodies, most famously the fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in 1994. ## See also - [[Meteoroid]] · [[Interplanetary_dust_cloud]] · [[Zodiacal_light]] - [[Comet]] · [[Halley's_Comet]] - International Meteor Organization · American Meteor Society · list of meteor showers ## References [^jenniskens2006]: Jenniskens, P. (2006). *Meteor Showers and Their Parent Comets*. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-85349-1. [^jenniskens2006b]: Jenniskens, P. (2006). *Meteor Showers and Their Parent Comets*. Cambridge University Press, pp. 157 and 355–472. ISBN 978-1-316-34782-9. [^mdc]: IAU Meteor Data Center. 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Vernadsky–Brown Microsymposium 36, abstract 50. https://www.planetary.brown.edu/planetary/documents/Micro_36/Abstracts/050_Kosarev_Nemtchinov.pdf ## External links - NASA Meteor Shower Portal (CAMS). https://meteorshowers.seti.org/ - International Meteor Organization: meteor shower calendar. https://www.imo.net/ - American Meteor Society. https://www.amsmeteors.org/ - IAU Meteor Data Center. https://www.ta3.sk/IAUC22DB/MDC2022/ ## Wikipedia : Wikitube **Strict pair:** [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_shower) : [Wikitube](https://en.wikitube.io/wiki/Meteor_shower) · pinned revision [1370783611](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1370783611) · 2026-09-18 ## Previous hub tags Hubs: `Life_Physics`. Portals: [[PORTAL_Solar_System]]. --- *Solar System portal child articles, wave 1 · 2026-09-18 · drafted · row SOL-083 · explorer state `?obj=dust`.* <!-- hub_tags: Life_Physics · PORTAL_Solar_System -->