Meteors & Meteorites

Meteor Showers

Meteor showers occur annually or at regular intervals as Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left by a comet and, in a few cases, asteroids.

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Introduction

Featured Meteor Showers

Introduction

Several meteors per hour can usually be seen on any clear night. When there are lots more meteors, you’re watching a meteor shower. Some meteor showers occur annually or at regular intervals as Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left by a comet and, in a few cases, asteroids.

Meteors are seen as streaks of light coming from a central point in the sky. Trees are in the foreground of the image. — The Perseids meteor shower peaks in mid-August. It is one of the most popular meteor showers of the year.
NASA/Preston Dyches

Dozens of meteors crossing the sky. — Over 100 meteors are recorded in this composite image taken during the peak of the Geminid meteor shower in 2014.
NASA/MSFC/Danielle Moser, NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office

A meteor heads toward Earth as seen from the ISS — Astronaut Ron Garan took this image from the International Space Station on Aug. 13, 2011, with the following caption: "What a 'Shooting Star' looks like from space, taken yesterday during Perseid Meteor Shower."
NASA/Ron Garan

Bright white lights over Earth as meteors collide with the atmosphere. Stars can be seen in the night sky above the curvature of the planet. — While most cameras were looking up at the 2012 peak of the Lyrid meteor shower, astronaut Don Pettit aboard the International Space Station trained his video camera on Earth below. Footage from that night is now revealing breathtaking images of Earth at night with meteors ablating - or burning up - in the atmosphere.
NASA/JSC/D. Pettit

Meteor in the sky. — Orionid meteors appear every year when Earth travels through an area of space littered with debris from Halley’s Comet.
NASA/JPL

Meteor showers are usually named after a star or constellation that is close to where the meteors appear to originate in the sky. Perhaps the most famous meteor shower is the Perseids, which peaks around mid-August every year. Each Perseid meteor is a tiny piece of comet Swift-Tuttle, which swings by the Sun every 135 years.

Other notable meteor showers include the Leonids, associated with comet Tempel-Tuttle; the Aquariids and Orionids, linked to comet Halley, and the Taurids, associated with comet Encke.

Most of this comet debris is between the size of a grain of sand and a pea. It burns up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. Sometimes, meteor dust is captured by high-altitude aircraft and analyzed in NASA laboratories.

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