What is a meteor shower?

As comets orbit the Sun, they shed trails of dust and small rocks. Each year Earth crosses some of these trails at the same time, and the particles burn up in the upper atmosphere as streaks of light called meteors. Because the particles travel on parallel paths, the meteors seem to spread from a single point, the radiant, which gives each shower its name. The Perseids, peaking around 12 August, come from Comet Swift–Tuttle and can produce 50 to 100 meteors an hour in dark skies. The Geminids in December are unusual because their parent body, 3200 Phaethon, is an asteroid-like object.