Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through a stream of debris left by a comet. Every particle enters the atmosphere at the same angle, creating the illusion that meteors stream from a single vanishing point — the radiant — due to perspective.
Meteors travel in parallel, but perspective projection makes parallel lines converge. The radiant point is the constellation the stream appears to emanate from. As particles hit air at 11–72 km/s they ablate: the kinetic energy ionises surrounding air molecules, producing the visible streak.
Select a shower (Perseids, Leonids, Geminids …) to set the authentic radiant altitude, speed and rate. Adjust the ZHR for storm vs. background rate (~10–1 000 meteors/hour). Raise the Fireball frequency for bright bolides, and drag the sky to orbit the camera.
The 1833 Leonid storm produced an estimated 100 000 meteors per hour, terrifying observers who thought Judgment Day had arrived. It led scientists to realise that meteor showers repeat annually and come from fixed directions — the first proof that comets leave persistent debris trails.
This simulation recreates a meteor shower as tiny particles streak into Earth's upper atmosphere and burn up. Each meteor is a fragment of cometary or asteroidal debris travelling at tens of kilometres per second; as it slams into the air, friction and compression heat it to incandescence, producing the glowing trail and the bright streak you see. All the meteors appear to radiate from a single point in the sky, the radiant, which you can drag, and larger particles can fragment into multiple sparks on entry.
Real meteor showers occur when Earth ploughs through the dusty trail left behind by a comet. The shower is named after the constellation containing its radiant, and the simulation includes presets for the Perseids, Leonids and Geminids. Studying how meteoroids ablate in the atmosphere helps scientists understand atmospheric entry physics, which also governs returning spacecraft and the survival of larger meteorites.
What causes a meteor's glowing trail?
As a meteoroid enters the atmosphere at high speed, it compresses and heats the air in front of it and is itself heated by friction. This vaporises the surface and ionises surrounding gas, producing the bright glowing streak.
What is the radiant of a meteor shower?
The radiant is the point in the sky from which all the meteors of a shower appear to diverge. It is a perspective effect caused by the parallel paths of the particles, and the shower is named after the constellation it lies in.
What is the difference between a meteoroid, meteor and meteorite?
A meteoroid is the small rocky or metallic body in space, a meteor is the streak of light it makes burning up in the atmosphere, and a meteorite is any fragment that survives the journey and lands on the ground.
Why does Earth pass through meteor showers at the same time each year?
Meteor showers happen when Earth crosses the debris trail of a comet. Because this crossing point is fixed along Earth's orbit, the planet meets the same stream on roughly the same dates every year.
They are three of the most famous annual meteor showers. The Perseids peak in August from comet Swift-Tuttle, the Leonids in November from comet Tempel-Tuttle, and the Geminids in December from the asteroid 3200 Phaethon.
Meteoroids typically enter the atmosphere at speeds between about 11 and 72 kilometres per second, depending on the geometry of their orbit relative to Earth. This enormous speed is what makes them glow so brightly.
Larger or more fragile meteoroids can break apart under the intense aerodynamic and thermal stress of entry. Each fragment then burns separately, producing multiple sparks or a brief shower of smaller streaks.
A fireball is an exceptionally bright meteor, brighter than the planet Venus. The brightest of these, which may explode audibly, are called bolides and are usually caused by larger-than-average meteoroids.
Most meteors begin to glow around 100 kilometres up and burn out by about 80 kilometres altitude, well above where aircraft fly. Only larger bodies penetrate deeper before disintegrating.
Yes. The same compression heating that destroys meteoroids is what re-entering spacecraft and capsules must survive, which is why they carry heat shields designed to manage that intense atmospheric heating.