Radiant (meteor shower) move along the comet's wake, and when the Earth moves through such debris, a meteor shower results. Because all of the debris is moving in roughly the same direction, the meteors which strike the atmosphere all "point" back to the direction of the comet's path. As an exception, the Geminids are a shower caused by the object 3200 Phaethon, which is thought to be a Palladian asteroid. The radiant is an important factor in observation. If the radiant point is at or below the horizon, then few if any meteors will be observed. This is because the atmosphere shields the
Eta Aquariids to be a source of meteoric activity. Although this shower is not as spectacular as the Leonids may be and well below the rates of the Perseids or the Geminids, it is not an ordinary event. The Eta Aquariids get their name because their radiant appears to lie in the constellation Aquarius, near one of the constellation's brightest stars, Eta Aquarii. The shower peaks at about a rate of around a meteor per minute, although such rates are rarely seen from northern latitudes due to the low altitude of the radiant. The Eta Aquariids are best viewed in the pre-dawn