Meteor Showers Trivia
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48 free Meteor Showers trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This meteor showers trivia quiz covers the annual sky shows and the science behind them. The easy questions handle the basics: what a meteor shower actually is, why showers are named after constellations, which comet feeds the Perseids, and which two showers Halley's Comet leaves behind every year. From there it moves into the calendar of major showers, from the January Quadrantids to the December Geminids and Ursids. The harder end is for amateur astronomers: the great Leonid storm of 1833 and who explained it, the Italian astronomer who first tied a shower to a comet, the asteroid that spawns the Geminids, why the Quadrantids are named after a constellation that no longer exists, the fastest and slowest showers, what zenithal hourly rate really measures, and the comet once feared to be on a collision course with Earth in 2126. There are also questions on the Taurid 'Halloween fireballs', the Draconid storms, the vanished Andromedids and the folklore of the 'tears of Saint Lawrence'. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for meteor showers, individual showers and their parent bodies before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our astronomy, comets and solar system quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What are bits of space debris called before they enter the atmosphere and burn up as meteors?
Meteoroids
Meteoroids in a shower are mostly between a grain of sand and a pea in size, which is why almost all burn up; a space rock that does reach the ground earns a third name, meteorite.
Q 02The Perseids, Leonids and Geminids all take their names from what?
Constellations
Constellations: each shower is named for the star pattern its meteors seem to stream from, with the Latin name given an '-id' ending, so Perseus gives the Perseids and Leo the Leonids.
Q 03The point in the sky from which a shower's meteors appear to fan out is called what?
The radiant
The radiant is a trick of perspective: the meteors travel on parallel paths and only seem to fan out, the way railway tracks appear to meet at the horizon.
Q 04What is the best equipment for watching a meteor shower?
The naked eye
The naked eye wins because a meteor can streak across any part of the sky, and a telescope or binoculars show only a sliver of it; a dark site and patience matter more than gear.
Q 05Which future president, woken by a deacon, watched the great Leonid storm of 1833?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was roused with the cry that the day of judgment had come; in the Civil War he retold it, saying the fixed stars had kept their places that night and so would the Union.
Q 06Which phase of the Moon is best for the peak night of a meteor shower?
New Moon
New Moon is best because moonlight washes out the fainter meteors; a full or gibbous Moon near the peak can sharply cut the number you see.
Q 07Which Italian astronomer showed in the 1860s that meteor showers travel along the orbits of comets?
Giovanni Schiaparelli
Giovanni Schiaparelli set out the link in letters to Angelo Secchi; he is better remembered for the 'canali' he later mapped on the Red Planet, a word mistranslated into English as canals.
Q 08Which German physicist, famed for sound patterns on vibrating plates, argued in 1794 that meteorites fall from space?
Ernst Chladni
Ernst Chladni's claim was far from accepted until 1803, when thousands of stones fell on the Normandy town of L'Aigle and Jean-Baptiste Biot's report made the case.
Q 09Which American astronomer described comets as 'dirty snowballs' that shed debris as their ices vaporise?
Fred Whipple
Fred Whipple also devised the Whipple shield, a thin outer bumper that shatters incoming particles before they reach a spacecraft's hull; NASA's Stardust probe carried one to a comet.
Q 10The Lyrids have been watched for some 2,700 years; which country holds the first record, from 687 BCE?
China
China: an ancient chronicle records that 'stars fell like rain', which makes the Lyrids one of the oldest showers on record.
Q 11Most meteor showers put on their best show during which part of the night?
Between midnight and dawn
Between midnight and dawn your side of Earth turns to face the way the planet is travelling, so it sweeps up more debris, and the point most showers seem to stream from has climbed higher by then.
Q 12In which layer of Earth's atmosphere do most meteors burn up?
Mesosphere
The mesosphere, roughly 50 to 85 km up, is where the thickening air heats a speeding grain until it vaporises; the iron and sodium atoms left behind linger there as a thin metallic layer.
Q 13The Perseids are associated with which comet?
Swift–Tuttle
Q 21Which religious founder wrote that the great 1833 Leonid storm fulfilled scripture and heralded the Second Coming?
Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith was woken to see 'the signs in the heavens' and wrote that the stars 'fell like hail stones'; on the Plains, Lakota winter counts remember 1833 as the year the stars fell.
Q 22Which asteroid, named after a doomed charioteer of Greek myth, is the unlikely parent of the Geminids?
Phaethon
Phaethon turned up in 1983 in images from the IRAS satellite, the first asteroid found by a spacecraft, and its orbit matched the Geminids, a shower that until then had no known parent.
Q 23The Geminids' parent asteroid holds what distinction among named asteroids?
Closest approach to the Sun
Swift–Tuttle caused a scare in 1992, when an official circular noted that a 15-day slip in its 2126 return could mean a hit on Earth; older sightings then pinned the orbit down and ruled that out.
Q 14The Perseids, the best-known meteor shower of the year, peak in the middle of which month?
August
August gives the Perseids their fame as much as their numbers: the peak around the 12th brings 50 to 100 meteors an hour on warm northern-summer nights, when staying out is easy.
Q 15A fireball is usually defined as a meteor that outshines which planet?
Venus
Venus, the brightest planet, sets the bar at about magnitude −4; a fireball beats it because the piece of debris is far larger than the sand-grain specks behind ordinary meteors.
Q 16Some Catholics call the Perseids the 'tears' of which early Christian martyr?
Saint Lawrence
Saint Lawrence's feast day falls just before the shower's peak; tradition says he was put to death on a gridiron in 258, so the meteors became his tears, or sparks from the fire.
Q 17Which John Denver song recalls the joy of watching the Perseid meteor shower with friends?
Rocky Mountain High
Rocky Mountain High: Denver told a Senate hearing in 1985 that broadcasters had banned it as a drug song, when its 'high' was the elation of a night in the mountains under the Perseids.
Q 18Which comet is the parent of the Leonids?
Tempel–Tuttle
Tempel–Tuttle was found twice over in 1865–66, by Ernst Tempel and then Horace Tuttle; within a year its orbit was seen to match the November meteors, proof that the shower is its dust.
Q 19What sets the roughly 33-year rhythm of the great Leonid meteor storms?
Their parent comet's orbit
Their parent comet's orbit takes about 33 years, and the dust is thickest close to it; when no storm came in 1899 many wrote the Leonids off, until 1966 proved otherwise.
Q 20At the peak of the 1966 Leonid storm, observers saw about 40 meteors how often?
Every second
Every second, but only for about a quarter of an hour: the burst, seen from the American Southwest, ran at some 144,000 meteors an hour.
Closest approach to the Sun: its orbit dips to 0.14 AU, less than half Mercury's nearest distance, which is why it was named after the boy who drove the Sun god's chariot.
Q 24The Geminids, known for bright, colourful meteors, peak in the middle of which month?
December
December, around the 13th and 14th; unlike most showers the Geminids are already going strong by mid-evening, because Gemini is high in the sky from about 10 pm.
Q 25What became of the Great Daylight Fireball seen from Utah to Alberta in 1972?
It flew back into space
It flew back into space: astronomers call such a meteor an earthgrazer, and this one, perhaps the size of a small truck, bounced off the upper atmosphere like a stone skipping across a lake.
Q 26Why are Quadrantids seen less often than Perseids or Geminids, despite similar top rates?
Their peak lasts only hours
Their peak lasts only hours because the stream is thin and Earth cuts across it at right angles; most showers stay near their best for a day or two.
Q 27The Quadrantids peak in the first week of which month?
January
January: the Quadrantids peak around the 3rd and 4th, and their parent body, 2003 EH1, looks like an asteroid but may be a dead comet.
Q 28The April Lyrids come from which comet, last seen in 1861 on an orbit lasting over four centuries?
Comet Thatcher
Comet Thatcher's old dust can still surprise: in 1803 a Lyrid outburst over Richmond, Virginia, was said to resemble 'a shower of sky rockets'.
Q 29Which two annual meteor showers are both produced by Halley's Comet?
Orionids and Eta Aquariids
Orionids and Eta Aquariids: Earth crosses the comet's trail twice a year, in October and again in early May, so one stream gives two showers even though the comet itself returns only about every 76 years.
Q 30Which author, born as Halley's Comet passed in 1835, died on its 1910 return?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain called it in 1909: 'I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835… and I expect to go out with it.' He died in April 1910 with the comet in the sky; it is next due in mid-2061.