Meteor Showers

Occasionally, when looking at the night sky, you might see a fast moving object streak across the sky, appearing and disappearing very quickly. What you saw is a meteor (not to be confused with a satellite, which move slower and can be seen sometimes for several minutes). Meteors are caused by objects in space hitting our atmosphere and burning up, causing the glow. There are actually three terms used to describe these objects:

• Meteoroid - a natural object (such as an asteroid) floating in space
• Meteor - a natural object that has hit the atmosphere, and is burning up
• Meteorite - a natural object that has survived the atmosphere and has impacted Earth

Meteors can be seen year round, as there is always stuff out there falling into the atmosphere. During certain times of the year, however, more meteors are visible than normal. This is a meteor shower. Meteor showers are caused by debris from comets hitting the atmosphere. This debris can float out there for hundreds of years before burning up in our atmosphere (some Leonid showers are caused by cometary debris from the 1600s). These meteors seem to radiate from a certain point in the sky, which is appropriately called its "radiant." Below is a list of meteor showers, radiants, dates, hourly meteor rates, and parent comets.