Why does meteor shower happen to originate in the same area i.e radiant of the meteor shower?

Question

I have read that meteor showers happen because earth passes through the debris left by the comets. If this is the case shouldn’t they be visible across the whole sky right from dusk to dawn?

In: Physics

Answer 1

The thing you might be missing is that the fragment cloud is also moving through space… the earth passed through it as it passed through the earth’s orbital path..