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Meteor showers
The year’s major showers in order of the next peak, rated for your location: how high the radiant climbs in true darkness and how much the Moon will interfere.
Nothing is sent anywhere: the math runs in your browser. Times use your device’s clock and time zone.
Rates are for a perfectly dark sky; light pollution and haze cut them a lot. Peak dates drift by about a day from year to year. Source: International Meteor Organization calendar; positions calculated in your browser.
- Use a wide, fast lens (14 to 24 mm at f/2.8 or faster) and point roughly 45 degrees away from the radiant, with some foreground for interest.
- Take many short exposures of 10 to 20 seconds at a high ISO or gain, with the tracker off for a fixed sky or on for sharp stars.
- Run an intervalometer all night and sort the frames afterward. Expect only a few percent to catch a meteor.
- Keep the camera dry: dew ends more meteor sessions than clouds do.
- What does ZHR mean?
- Zenithal hourly rate: the meteors an observer would count in an hour under a perfectly dark sky with the shower's radiant straight overhead. Real counts are lower, because the radiant is rarely overhead, moonlight and light pollution hide the faint ones, and haze dims the rest. The "ideal sky" figure here scales the ZHR by how high the radiant gets at your site.
- Why does the Moon matter so much?
- A bright Moon washes out all but the brightest meteors, which can cut a shower's count by more than half. A thin or absent Moon on peak night is the best case. If the Moon is up but the radiant is high, aim for the part of the night after it sets.
- What is the radiant?
- The point in the sky the meteors seem to stream away from. You do not need to look at it: meteors appear all over the sky, and looking about 45 degrees away from the radiant usually shows the longest trails. A radiant that stays below your horizon means few or no meteors from that shower.
- Should I go on the exact peak night?
- The night before and after are usually nearly as good for the big showers, and the exact peak moves by about a day from year to year. For the Quadrantids the peak is only a few hours wide, so they depend on luck with timing.
Open the Dark Window planner to check cloud cover for the peak night.
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