Quadrantid meteor shower: How to watch as first shower of 2025 peaks
Stargazers are in for a New Year treat as the first meteor shower of 2025 graces our night sky in early January.
If you have already found yourself looking upwards over the past few nights you might have been lucky enough to have spotted some of the Quadrantid meteors shoot across the sky.
This shower is set to peak around 3-4 January, but has been visible since 26 December and will continue until 12 January.
According to Royal Museums Greenwich, external, it is "one of the strongest and most consistent meteor showers of the year".
The good news is that you do not need any specialist equipment for a chance to spot the meteors, but you may need a little patience.
First of all, given it is winter, make sure you are wrapped up well from the elements and keep warm. Get yourself comfortable in a garden chair or sun lounger, in as dark an area as possible, and allow your eyes a good 15 to 20 minutes to adjust.
The meteors may be visible just about anywhere in the sky, but are best viewed around two thirds of the way above the horizon, where the atmosphere is thinner.
The point in the sky from which the meteors appear to originate is known as the radiant and the quality of the display is measured by how many meteors are visible every hour - known as the zenithal hourly rate.
The radiant for the Quadrantids is in the former constellation of Quadrans Muralis - hence the shower's name - close to the Plough. The zenithal hourly rate could be close to 120 meteors per hour, though this peak lasts only a couple of hours.
Luckily, around the peak viewing days, a waxing moon sets during the evening and so reduces the prospect of extra light pollution spoiling the event.
As with any celestial event, clear skies are crucial to our enjoyment of them.
After a cloud-laden Christmas period, the forecast over the next few nights is a bit more promising. Most parts of the UK will enjoy some clearer periods on both Thursday and Friday night.
Wintry showers in northern Scotland will hide the view of the sky at times on Thursday night, with some of those showers spreading south into Northern Ireland, north-west England and north Wales later.
On Friday night some of you will be wanting an early meteor display as cloud increases from the south-west.
Wherever you are attempting to view the sky be prepared to dress for much colder conditions. Arctic air that will sit across the UK may mean better viewing conditions, but it also comes with a marked chill.
Check your latest forecast here or on the BBC Weather app.
First Meteor Shower Of 2025 Peaks Tonight—Here’s How To Watch
The first meteor shower of 2025—considered by NASA to be one of the best annual showers—is projected to reach a peak in activity Thursday night, with hundreds of meteors expected to brighten the night sky if weather conditions are optimal.
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The Quadrantids are best seen in the Northern Hemisphere, and NASA recommends traveling to an area away from light pollution and lying flat on your back with your feet facing northeast, allowing your eyes to adjust for about 30 minutes before they can see meteors. Some states will have dense cloud coverage Thursday night and will likely be unable to see the shower, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Tennessee and parts of Pennsylvania and New York.
Meteors will likely begin appearing in the sky as the sun starts to set around 5 p.m. EST, though a peak will persist through the night and into early Friday morning, according to the American Meteor Society.
The Quadrantids are the first of nine annual meter showers featuring the most activity in the night sky, preceding the Lyrids in April. Quadrantids are known for their fireball meteors, whose explosions feature light and color for longer periods and are three times brighter than the average meteor. Meteors during the Quadrantids travel at about 25 miles per second, and its peak is shorter than other annual meteor showers because of the Earth’s trajectory with the shower, according to NASA.
The northern lights are also expected to be more visible to more people in 2025, the agency noted, as activity on the sun’s surface reached a “solar maximum” in October 2024. This peak will likely persist into early 2026, forecasters said.
How to watch the Quadrantids, one of the strongest meteor showers of the year
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The new year kicks off with the peak of the Quadrantids, one of the strongest meteor showers of the year, according to NASA.
But keep your eyes peeled because with a peak only lasting about six hours, as opposed to multiple days, the Quadrantids are also one of the quickest meteor showers to blaze across the night sky.
Meteors are leftover pieces from broken asteroids and comet particles that spread out in dusty trails orbiting the sun. Each year, Earth passes through the debris trails, and pieces of dust and rock create colorful, fiery displays called meteor showers as they disintegrate in our planet’s atmosphere.
The peak of the Quadrantids is so limited compared with most meteor showers because the shower only has a thin stream of particles and Earth passes through the densest concentration of those particles quickly at a perpendicular angle, according to NASA.
Maximum meteor activity is expected to peak between 10 a.m. ET to 1 p.m. ET (15 to 18 Coordinated Universal Time) on January 3, which favors Alaska, Hawaii and far eastern Asia, said Bob Lunsford, fireball report coordinator for the American Meteor Society.
The best time to spot the meteor shower will be during the hours before dawn, according to EarthSky.
Sky-gazers on the east coast of North America may see up to 25 meteors streaking across the skies, while those on the west coast could see double that amount due to a later sunrise, Lunsford said. And if skies remain clear over western Alaska, viewers of the shower could witness an excess of 100 meteors per hour, he said.
The waxing crescent moon, only 11% full, will set well before midnight, allowing unhampered viewing of the meteor shower, Lunsford said.
While the Quadrantids don’t have long, persistent trains streaking behind them, they are capable of producing bright fireballs for a dramatic display. Fireballs are bright blasts of light and color associated with larger particles that linger longer than typical meteor streaks, according to NASA.
The Quadrantids usually aren’t visible in the Southern Hemisphere because the shower’s radiant point, or the point at which the meteors appear to come from, doesn’t rise that high in its sky before dawn.
If you live in an urban area, you may want to drive to a place that isn’t full of bright city lights. If you’re able to find an area unaffected by light pollution, meteors could be visible every couple of minutes from late evening until dawn.
Find an open area with a wide view of the sky. Make sure you have a chair or blanket so you can look straight up. And give your eyes about 20 to 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness — without looking at your phone — so the meteors will be easier to spot.
If the meteor shower’s name seems unusual, it’s probably because the name doesn’t sound as if it’s related to a constellation. That’s because the Quadrantids’ namesake constellation no longer exists — at least, not as a recognized constellation.
The constellation Quadrans Muralis, first observed and noted in 1795 between Boötes and Draco, is no longer included in the International Astronomical Union’s list of modern constellations because it’s considered obsolete and isn’t used as a landmark for celestial navigation anymore, according to EarthSky.
The radiant point of the shower is a right angle between the Big Dipper and the bright star Arcturus, according to EarthSky. But the meteors will be visible in all parts of the sky, so it’s not necessary to look only in that direction.
Like the Geminid meteor shower, the Quadrantids come from a mysterious asteroid or “rock comet,” rather than an icy comet, which is unusual. This particular asteroid is 2003 EH1, which takes 5.52 years to complete one orbit around the sun and measures 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) across.
But astronomers believe a second object, Comet 96P/Machholz, may also contribute to the shower, according to EarthSky. The comet orbits the sun every 5.3 years.
Scientists think a larger comet was gravitationally bound into a short orbit by the sun around 2000 BC. The comet left behind meteors for years before breaking apart sometime between the years 100 and 950. As a result, the comet left behind many celestial offspring known collectively as the Machholz Complex, which includes the Quadrantid meteor shower’s parent bodies Comet 96P/Machholz and asteroid 2003 EH1, as well as two different comet groups and eight meteor showers, according to EarthSky.
After the Quadrantids, there is a bit of a lull in meteor shower activity, and the next one won’t occur until April. Here are the remaining showers to anticipate and their peak dates in 2025.
Lyrids: April 21-22
Eta Aquariids: May 3-4
Southern Delta Aquariids: July 29-30
Alpha Capricornids: July 29-30
Perseids: August 12-13
Draconids: October 8-9
Orionids: October 22-23
Southern Taurids: November 3-4
Northern Taurids: November 8-9
Leonids: November 16-17
Geminids: December 12-13
Ursids: December 21-22
The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks tonight! Don't miss the 1st 'shooting stars' of 2025
Early each January, the Quadrantid meteor stream provides one of the most intense annual meteor displays, with a brief, sharp maximum lasting only a few hours. For this reason, many stargazing guides make reference to this display as being particularly elusive. However, in 2025, viewing circumstances favor North Americans, particularly those living west of the Mississippi.
The meteors actually radiate from the northeast corner of the constellation of Boötes, the Herdsman, so we might expect them to be called the "Boötids." But back in the late 18th century there was a different constellation there called Quadrans Muralis, the "Mural or Wall Quadrant" (an astronomical instrument). It is a long-obsolete star pattern, invented in 1795 by J.J. Lalande to commemorate the instrument used to observe the stars in his catalogue. Adolphe Quetelet of Brussels Observatory discovered the shower in the 1830s, and shortly afterward it was noted by several astronomers in Europe and America.
Thus, they were christened "Quadrantids" and even though the constellation from which these meteors appear to radiate no longer exists, the shower's original moniker continues to this day.
At greatest activity, 60 to 120 meteors per hour should be seen during the 2025 Quadrantid meteor shower.
However, the Quadrantid influx is sharply peaked: six hours before and after maximum, these blue meteors appear at only half of their highest rates. This means that the stream of particles is a narrow one — possibly derived relatively recently from a small comet.
In fact, in 2003, astronomer Peter Jenniskens of NASA, found a near-Earth asteroid (2003 EH1) that seemed like it was on the right orbit to make the Quadrantids. Some astronomers think that this asteroid is really a piece of an old, "extinct" comet; perhaps a comet that was recorded by Chinese, Korean and Japanese observers during the years 1490-91. Maybe that comet broke apart, and some of the pieces became the meteoroids that make up the Quadrantid stream.
In 2025 a moderately strong display of Quadrantid meteors is likely for North America, particularly over the western half of the continent. According to Margaret Campbell-Brown and Peter Brown in the 2025 edition of the Observer's Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, maximum activity is expected at around 10 a.m. Eastern Time or 7 a.m. Pacific Time (1500 GMT). Just before the break of dawn, the radiant of this shower — from where the meteors appear to emanate — will be ascending the dark northeastern sky.
This is also the time that the dawn side of the Earth is facing forward in our 18.5-mile (30 km) per second face around the sun. This added velocity also means that our upper atmosphere strikes more meteors, and hits them harder, thus making them appear brighter, as opposed to when meteors come at us from behind during the evening.
Those who live in the eastern half of North America will be seeing the "Quads" increasing in intensity before bright morning twilight and sunrise intervenes, with a single observer likely to see rates of 20 to 40 per hour. For those who live in the western half of North America, meteor rates will probably be even higher, possibly even approaching their absolute peak rates of 60 to 120 per hour.
With no moonlight to interfere, this might turn out to be one of the best meteor displays of the year.
Lastly — and we've touched on this point before, but certainly it should be addressed again: Likely your local weather will be more appropriate for taking in a hot bath as opposed to a meteor shower. And indeed, at this time of year, meteor watching can be a long, cold business. You wait and you wait for meteors to appear. When they don't appear right away, and if you're cold and uncomfortable, you're not going to be looking for meteors for very long!
Therefore, make sure you're warm and comfortable. Warm cocoa or coffee can take the edge off the chill, as well as provide a slight stimulus. It's even better if you can observe with friends. That way, you can cover more of the sky.
So bundle up, good luck and enjoy this meteor show(er)!
If you want to try your hand at photographing the Quadrantids or any other meteor shower, check out our guide on how to photograph meteors and meteor showers. And if you need new imaging gear, consider our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers' Almanac and other publications.
When and where to see the Quadrantids, 2025's first meteor shower
The new year will kick off with the Quadrantid meteor shower, which is set to peak early on Friday.
The Quadrantids have the potential of 200 meteors an hour under perfect conditions, but most astronomy fans can catch 20-30 meteors an hour under clear, dark skies during the peak, according to NASA. The moon will be a "mere crescent" and set early in the night, which should make for good meteor viewing conditions, according to the space agency.
The meteor shower will peak in the early morning hours on Friday, according to NASA. While meteor showers last for days, the per hour rate of meteors will be best during the peak and the highest as dawn approaches.
The Quadrantids will be active until Jan. 16, according to the American Meteor Society.
NASA advises viewing meteor showers in areas well away from city and street lights. The Quadrantids are best seen from the Northern Hemisphere, and observers in the Northwest and Pacific region will likely have the best viewing opportunities this year.
Those heading outside to catch the celestial show should lie flat on their backs with their feet facing northeast and look up. Be prepared to wait about 30 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the dark. Viewers should also bring along a blanket or sleeping bag to help with the chilly January weather.
Meteors are space rocks that enter Earth's atmosphere. They streak through the sky every night, and when Earth encounters many meteors at once, it's called a meteor shower. The meteors heat up as they pass through the atmosphere, making them look like shooting stars.
While most meteor showers originate from comets, the Quadrantids come from asteroid 2003 EH1 — a small asteroid that was discovered on March 6, 2003.
The Quadrantids are also known for their bright fireball meteors, with larger explosions of light and color that can last longer than an average meteor streak, according to NASA.
