Hoping to start the new year with a beautiful view of a meteor shower? You could be considered lucky because the evening of January 3 and the early morning of January 4 will provide a decent chance of seeing Quadrantids.
The brighter the moon in the sky, the less detail you’ll see, and in that regard, this year will be good but not so great for Quadrantids fans. Last year, by contrast, the moon was nearly full during the peak of the Quadrantids – bad news for stargazers. 2024 looks slightly better, with the moon at about half as bright.
When to see Quadrantids
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Every year, around January 1 to 5, this meteor shower arrives, and there will be some visible meteor activity every night during that time window – although the evening of January 3 and the early morning of January 4 are the best times. The best time to see it is after midnight, or whenever the meteor’s radiation point, the constellation Bootes, is visible in the night sky.
According to the American Meteor Society, peak hours are “between 1-5 am local” for locations in North America, but as always, check your local schedule, and remember that the weather does not bend to the whims of the stargazing calendar.
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What is a ‘Quadrantid’?
If your last astronomy lesson was decades ago, you’ve probably forgotten what a meteor is, and there’s nothing embarrassing about that. Yes, they are the same thing as “shooting stars,” but that name is very misleading because meteors are simply tiny space dust particles that burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. They are also not light years away from our eyes like the stars. Instead, they were several tens of miles away.
This particular space dust particle likely came from a comet called 2003 EH1, discovered in the same year as its namesake. As Earth’s orbit takes us repeatedly through the trail of the comet’s cosmic remains, dust particles – or meteoroids – collide with our atmosphere, producing the light show we call a meteor shower.
How to view Quadrantids
To hope to see an amazing show, you need to stay away from the city lights. These meteors originate from the position of the Bootes constellation in the sky, and a stargazing app might help if you don’t know how to find Bootes. However, don’t get hung up on Bootes, because meteors will appear everywhere above your head. Just lean back, stay warm, let your eyes get used to the darkness, and keep looking up.
Unless there’s cloud cover, given enough time, you’ll see something interesting.
2023-12-30 16:34:22
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