New meteor shower "just a memory" of what once was there

The weak display of last month's Camelopardalids meteor shower, the result of the close passage of comet 209P/LINEAR, may have disappointed backyard observers, but this never-before-seen shower now has scientists excited. An analysis of airborne and ground-based observations published in the latest issue of the Journal of the International Meteor Organization finds that this comet's dust was unusually fragile, and had fallen apart into undersized meteors that were largely invisible.