The October Camelopardalid Meteor Shower is potentially visible each year on 5-6 October, peaking on before dawn on 6 October. This meteor shower gets its name from the constellation of Camelopardalis, which is circumpolar in the Northern Hemisphere (i.e. always above the horizon), from which meteors appear to radiate. The shower is quite variable, being almost impossible to spot most years, but having produced peaks in 2005, 2006, and 2016. If the meteors do make an appearance this year, then they may not be easy to spot, as the Full Moon fell on 1 October 2020, just a few days before the meteor shower.
The radiant point of the October Camelopardalid Meteor Shower. Society for Popular Astronomy.
Meteor
showers are thought to be largely composed of material from the
tails of comets. Comets are composed largely of ice (mostly water and
carbon
dioxide), and when they fall into the inner Solar System the outer
layers of this boil away, forming a visible tail (which always points
away from the Sun, not in the direction the comet is coming from, as our
Earth-bound experience would lead us to expect). Particles of rock and
dust from within the comet are freed by this melting (strictly
sublimation, transforming directly from a solid to a gas due to the low
pressure on it's surface) of the comet into the tail and continue to
orbit in the
same path as the comet, falling behind over time.
The parent body of the October Camelopardalid Meteor Shower is unknown, but the irregular nature of the meteor showe makes it likely that it is a Long Period Comet (i.e. a comet that visits the Inner Solar System less frequently than once every 200 years), and quite possibly one that has not yet been observed at all.
See also...
