How to watch a meteor shower: when, where to look, and what to expect

What a meteor shower is

Comets (and a few asteroids) leave trails of dust along their orbits. When Earth passes through one of these trails, grains the size of sand hit the upper atmosphere at 11 to 72 km per second and burn up about 80–120 km above the ground. Because Earth crosses each trail on the same dates every year, showers return on schedule.

All the meteors of a shower travel in parallel, so seen from the ground they seem to spread out from one point in the sky, like snowflakes in car headlights. That point is the radiant, and the shower is named after the constellation it lies in.

Why you will see fewer than the headline number

Shower strength is quoted as the ZHR (zenithal hourly rate): how many meteors one observer would see in an hour under a perfectly dark sky with the radiant straight overhead. Real conditions are never that good.

With the radiant halfway up the sky you see roughly 70% of the ZHR; under a suburban sky, perhaps a quarter or less; with a bright Moon, fewer still. So a shower with a ZHR of 120 might give 30–60 an hour from a dark site and 10–20 from a town. That is still a meteor every few minutes, which feels a lot when you are watching.

The best hours

For most showers the rates climb after midnight and peak in the hours before dawn. That is when your side of Earth faces forward along its orbit, scooping up more meteors, and when the radiant is highest. The Geminids are an exception: their radiant rises early, so they are good from mid-evening on.

Check the Moon. A shower peaking near full Moon loses most of its fainter meteors; one near new Moon can be spectacular. Our meteor page gives the hours when the radiant is up and the sky is dark for your city.

Where to look

Not at the radiant. Meteors near it are short, because they come almost straight toward you. Look at the darkest part of the sky about 40–60° away from the radiant and roughly halfway up, and take in as much sky as you can. You don't need binoculars or a telescope: they show too little sky.

Lie back on a reclining chair or a mat, give your eyes 20–30 minutes to adapt, and stay off your phone. Meteors come in clusters and lulls, so plan for at least an hour.

The major showers of the year

• Quadrantids (early January): a strong but very short peak, only a few hours; best from the Northern Hemisphere.
• Perseids (around 12–13 August): ZHR about 100, warm summer nights in the north, from comet 109P/Swift–Tuttle. The most-watched shower of the year.
• Orionids (around 21 October) and Leonids (around 17 November): moderate showers from Halley's comet and comet 55P/Tempel–Tuttle. The Leonids are fast and occasionally storm.
• Geminids (around 13–14 December): ZHR about 150, the richest shower of the year, with bright, slow meteors from the asteroid 3200 Phaethon. In 2026 the Moon is a thin crescent that sets early, so conditions are excellent.

Photographing meteors

Put a camera on a tripod, use the widest lens you have, focus on a bright star, open the aperture fully and take back-to-back exposures of 10–30 seconds at a high ISO. Aim about 45° from the radiant. Most frames will be empty; a bright meteor or two in an hour of shooting is a good result, and stacking them later makes a striking shower image.