Radiant (meteor shower) Radiant (meteor shower) The radiant or apparent radiant of a meteor shower is the celestial point in the sky from which (from the point of view of a terrestrial observer) the paths of meteors appear to originate. The Perseids, for example, are meteors which appear to come from a point within the constellation of Perseus. Meteor paths appear at random locations in the sky, but the apparent paths of two or more meteors from the same shower will converge at the radiant. The radiant is the vanishing point of the meteor paths, which are parallel lines in three-dimensional space, as
Parallel (geometry) same three-dimensional space that do not intersect need not be parallel. Only if they are in a common plane are they called parallel; otherwise they are called skew lines. Two distinct lines "l" and "m" in three-dimensional space are parallel if and only if the distance from a point "P" on line "m" to the nearest point on line "l" is independent of the location of "P" on line "m". This never holds for skew lines. A line "m" and a plane "q" in three-dimensional space, the line not lying in that plane, are parallel if and only if they