How to use this page: the highlighted card is the next major shower to peak from your location. Click any card for details on that shower, including its parent comet or asteroid. Rates shown account for the radiant's height above your horizon and the current moon brightness -- the shower's official peak rate (ZHR) assumes perfectly dark skies with the radiant directly overhead, which is rarely the real-world case.
Key Definitions
- Meteor shower
- A period when Earth passes through a comet or asteroid's debris trail, producing an increased number of meteors that all appear to streak outward from one point in the sky.
- Radiant
- The point in the sky a shower's meteors appear to originate from -- named after the constellation it sits in, like the Perseids radiating from Perseus.
- ZHR (Zenithal Hourly Rate)
- The number of meteors a single observer would see per hour under perfectly dark skies with the radiant directly overhead -- a theoretical best case, not a typical real-world count.
- Parent body
- The comet or asteroid whose shed debris, burning up in Earth's atmosphere, produces a given shower's meteors.
- Relative moonlight
- How bright the Moon is compared to an average full moon (100%), combining its phase and distance -- higher values wash out fainter meteors.