Meteor showers are heavier displays that recur from year to year. The number of meteors visible depends upon the shower, but the number of visible meteors can range from 5 per hour to 100 per hour or more. While sporadic meteors appear to come from random directions in the sky, a meteor shower has a radiant . The radiant of a shower is the point in the sky from which meteors would appear to come if you traced their visible paths backward. Like sporadic meteors, meteors from a shower can be seen in any part of the sky, but if you take the ending point of the meteors' trails and trace them backward through their starting points, the place where these paths converge is the radiant for that shower.
Most meteor showers are at their best after midnight.
After midnight, you're on the leading edge of the Earth and you're meeting the meteors head on. Before midnight, you're on the trailing edge of the Earth and the meteors have to catch up to you. As a result not only are more meteors seen in the pre-dawn hours, but their impact speeds encountering the Earth's atmosphere are much higher and the meteors are generally faster and brighter. I have created a low volume email list for adavnce notification of upcoming meteor showers and unusual astronomical events. To join, simply enter your email address below and click on the join now button .