Radiant: Apparent origin point of the meteors within a shower, as viewed from Earth.

Streams which have a tendency to undergo frequent orbital perturbations may only cause infrequent and rare storms, some never occurring again.
To help make the possibility even more remote, these streams also tend to be very narrow, with the planet earth taking just a few hours to cross the concentrated portion of the streams’ path.

The quiet lulls in activity that typically occur during meteor-viewing sessions are useful times to understand the constellations.
However, avoid looking down at charts for prolonged periods because this might cause you to miss trails.
As with all scientific recordings, you can find guidelines to check out.
Getting this right will raise your observations and help advance our common knowledge of how specific meteor showers work.
Earth passes through numerous dust streams annually and, when this happens, the quantity of trails seen increases.
Peak activity occurs whenever we

• Because the stream in charge of the predicted outbursts was ejected in 1933, only its smallest particles have already been able to drift into a path that Earth will intersect.
• The rare and infrequent meteors you might see before the radiant rises will be earth grazers, which start below your horizon and then trace long paths across your sky.

Newspaper accounts of that time period reported that many people were awakened from sleep either by the shouts of neighbors, or the light of the meteors in the sky.
Some of these periodic comets still return to our view; others have way back when fallen apart, leaving only a trail of dust in it.
The dust particles from a given comet retain approximately the orbit of these parent, continuing to move together through space but spreading out over the orbit as time passes.
When Earth, in its travels round the Sun, crosses such a dust stream, we visit a sudden burst of meteor activity that usually lasts several hours; such an event is called a meteor shower.
These showers will generally yield no more than 1-5 meteors each hour at their maximums, with just a sprinkling of meteors produced on non-maximum nights.

The Quadrantids have the potential to function as strongest shower of the entire year but usually fall short as a result of short amount of maximum activity and the indegent weather experienced during early January.
The average hourly rates one can expect under dark skies is 25.
These meteors usually lack persistent trains but often produce bright fireballs.

Models of the Perseids predict a gradual decline in activity from the peak in 2004.
Generally visible between December 28 and January 6, the Quadrantids have a sharp activity peak around January 3.
Typical rates vary between 40 and 100 each hour; about 5 percent leave trains.
When the shower was first named annual in 1839, the radiant occurred in a constellation no longer recognized — Quadrans Muralis .
The cold nights of northern winters and typically faint meteors keep this shower from being truly popular.
Large meteors can explode above the surface, causing widespread damage from the blast and ensuing fire.

Astronomers recognized the Lyrids as an annual shower in 1839 and connected it it to its parent comet, C\1861 G1, in 1867.
Lyrid meteors are bright and rather fast (30 miles per second), and about 15 percent leave persistent trains.
Meteors tend to be spotted creating a solitary fall to Earth.