Shooting stars and a comet. Two shooting stars (centre left and upper right) from the Geminid meteor shower, passing through the constellations of Auriga and Cassiopeia. The fuzzy object at lower centre is Comet Holmes, in the constellation of Perseus. At bottom left is the open star cluster of the Pleiades. The Geminid meteor shower, pieces of debris from the extinct comet 3200 Phaethon, occurs annually in December. Comet Holmes, a short-period comet with an orbit of only 6.9 years, last appeared in 2007.