... Aurigids from 47 000 Feet . ... Credit: Jeremie Vaubaillon , Caltech , NASA Explanation: On September 1, Aurigid meteors filled the sky, in keeping with inovative predictions of an outburst from this historically tentative meteor shower. ... The source of the shower is understood to be Comet Kiess, a comet that would have last swung through the inner solar system around 2,000 years ago . Influenced by gravity, dust from the tail of the comet has been drifting toward the Earth's orbit ever since. ...