ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Zenith hourly rate

Okay kiddo, are you ready to learn about something called the zenith hourly rate? Here we go!

You know how the Earth spins around, right? And you know how we have daytime and nighttime because of that? Well, the zenith hourly rate has to do with a special kind of nighttime called "meteor shower time."

Meteor showers happen when tiny pieces of rock and ice called meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up, creating bright streaks of light in the sky. It's like a firework show in space!

The zenith hourly rate is a way of measuring how many meteors you can expect to see during a meteor shower. It's called the "zenith" because it's the point directly overhead, where you would look if you were laying on your back and staring straight up at the sky.

The "hourly rate" part means how many meteors you can expect to see in one hour if you're watching from a good spot with clear skies and no light pollution (that's all the bright lights from buildings and streetlights and stuff that makes it hard to see stars).

So, let's say the zenith hourly rate for a particular meteor shower is 20. That means you could expect to see about 20 meteors in one hour if you're in a good spot with clear skies and no light pollution. But remember, that's just an average - some people might see more or less than that depending on where they are and how good their view of the sky is.

And that's the basic idea of the zenith hourly rate! It's a way of measuring how many meteors you can expect to see during a meteor shower. Pretty cool, huh?