Meteor showers: the complete viewing guide

A "shooting star" is not a star but cosmic grit — often no bigger than a grain of rice — slamming into our atmosphere at 30 to 70 kilometres per second. At around 80 to 100 km altitude the grain vaporises in a split second into the streak of light we call a meteor. Free fireworks: a few per hour on any clear night, and dozens during a shower.

Where do showers come from?

Comets are dirty snowballs: every pass around the Sun they shed grit that lingers along their orbit. When Earth crosses such a debris trail — on nearly the same date every year — meteors rain down. Because all particles arrive from the same direction, they appear to radiate from one point in the sky: the radiant. Showers are named after the constellation hosting that point: Perseids from Perseus, Geminids from Gemini.

The annual calendar

• Quadrantids — 3/4 January. Short, sharp peak (a few hours!) of 100+ meteors per hour. Catch the peak and it's spectacular.
• Lyrids — 22/23 April. Modest (~18/hr) but reliable, with occasional bright fireballs.
• Eta Aquariids — 5/6 May. Debris of comet Halley: fast meteors with long trails, best from southern latitudes.
• Perseids — 12/13 August. The crowd favourite: up to ~60 per hour in pleasant summer nights. Debris of comet Swift-Tuttle.
• Orionids — 21/22 October. Second visit to Halley's trail, ~20/hr, fast and bright.
• Leonids — 17/18 November. Usually modest, but notorious for historic meteor storms (1966: thousands per minute!).
• Geminids — 13/14 December. The king: up to 120 per hour, slow and bright, born of "rock comet" 3200 Phaethon. Dress warmly.
• Ursids — 22/23 December. A small dessert (~10/hr) for those already outside.

How to see the most

• Dark, darker, darkest. City light hides all but the brightest meteors. Head for dark-sky country.
• Check the Moon. A full moon washes out faint meteors; a new-moon peak is the jackpot.
• No telescope, no binoculars. Meteors appear everywhere — you want the widest field of view: your own eyes. Lie back, look ~45° away from the radiant, allow 20 minutes of dark adaptation.
• Patience literally pays. Meteors come in bursts; fifteen quiet minutes then three in one minute is normal.

Fireballs: the grand prize

Occasionally the debris is not a rice grain but a marble or a fist — then you get a fireball: a meteor brighter than Venus, sometimes with a smoke trail and colour bursts. If a fragment survives to the ground, it becomes a meteorite — a genuinely rare event at any single location on Earth.

Frequently asked questions