The new year has opened with a stunning astronomical event: the Quadrantids meteor shower, one of the finest meteor showers of all. The shower is visible throughout early January, and there’s still time to view it before it ends on January 12 — so if you’d like to take a look, we have advice on how to catch it.
A video from the Royal Astronomical Society explains how to see the shower, and how the get the best view of shooting stars:
This shower is a great one to look out for if you’re on the West Coast of the U.S. or in the Pacific region, according to the Royal Astronomical Society’s deputy director Robert Massey: “They have a pretty strong intensity if you happen to be in the right place at the right time … The great advantage this year is that the moon isn’t interfering with it, so you haven’t got a full moon in the sky – it’s a very thin crescent – [which] means the light will not be a big problem.”
Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through a field of debris left behind by a comet or asteroid. In the case of the Quadrantids, the debris is from near-Earth asteroid (196256) 2003 EH1, which is thought to be the same object spotted by Chinese astronomers in 1490. As the Earth passes through the debris, pieces of it burn up in the atmosphere, which appear as shooting stars.
At the peak of the Quadrantids, there can be up to 70 or 80 meteors visible per hour. “They won’t be the brightest meteors on the whole, but [the Quadrantids] do include a fair number of fireballs,” Massey said. “A fireball is a dramatic-sounding thing, but what it really means is that it’s a really bright meteor. The Quadrantids is a meteor shower which produces that kind of event. So for that reason alone, if you have the time to look out and the weather is good, then do take a look because it’s a perfect New Year treat.”
To get a good view of the meteor shower, you’ll need to head outside at night as far away from light sources like cities as you can get. Although meteor showers look stunning, they aren’t great to try to photograph with your phone as the meteors move too quickly, so just enjoy the view. And for one last tip, Massey advises not to use binoculars or a telescope to view the sky, because these will limit your view to a small area. Instead, just sit back and relax, and wait for the show overhead.
