In many cases, the orbits of these meteor streams can be identified with the dust tails of comets . When the Earth passes through the streams, the particles leave brilliant trails through the night sky as they burn up in the atmosphere. Above is an image of a meteor shower known as the Quadrantids . To make the image, frames from a video tape were computer processed and superposed to show the relative paths of many meteors in the shower . The meteor paths are all parallel to each other, but the effect of perspective causes the trails to appear to originate from a distant radiant point in the sky.
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