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Daytime meteor shower

A daytime meteor shower has its radiant near the Sun, so its meteors are detected mostly by radio rather than seen.

A daytime meteor shower is a shower whose radiant lies close to the Sun in the sky, so it is above the horizon mainly in daylight. Its meteors are just as real as those of night-time showers, but they cannot be seen against the bright sky. Instead, radio and radar observations detect them.

The strongest is the Daytime Arietids, active from late May to late June and peaking around 7 June. Radio counts suggest it may be one of the richest showers of the year, with rates comparable to the Perseids. Another is the Daytime Zeta Perseids in June, and the Beta Taurids in late June and July are the daytime counterpart of the autumn Taurids.

Observers occasionally see a few Arietids as earthgrazers in the hour before dawn, when the radiant is just rising. Daytime showers show that visual observations give only part of the picture of meteoroid streams around Earth's orbit.

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