Meteor shower

A meteor shower, some of which are known as a "meteor storm" or "meteor outburst," is a celestial event where a group of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the sky. These meteors are small fragments of cosmic debris entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speed. They vaporize due to friction with the air, leaving a streak of light that very quickly disappears. For bodies with a size scale larger than the atmospheric mean free path (10 cm to several metres) this visible light is due to the heat produced by the ram pressure (not friction, as is commonly assumed) of atmospheric entry [1]. Most of the small fragments of cosmic debris are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all fragments disintegrate and never hit the earth's surface. Fragments which do contact Earth's surface are called meteorites.

Most famous meteor showers

The most spectacular meteor shower is probably the Leonids, the King of Meteor Showers.^[7] Approximately every 33 years the Leonid shower produces a "meteor storm" with hundreds of thousands of meteors per hour. These Leonid storms gave birth to the term "meteor shower" since most meteor showers produce only a few meteors per hour, rarely producing as many as one meteor every 30 seconds. The last two massive Leonid storms were in 1933 and 1966. The anticipated storm of 1999 was much less spectacular. When the Leonid shower is not storming it is less active than the Perseids.