12 principal showers
Meteor Showers
Southern Taurids is active right now. The next peak is the Draconids on 8 October 2026. Every rate below is paired with the moonlight for that night, which matters more than the nominal figure.
Is there a meteor shower tonight? →
Southern Taurids · ~1/hr tonight · Moon 81% lit
Every shower in 2026
| Shower | Peak 2026 | Rate | Moon | Realistic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quadrantids | 3 January | 110/hr | 100% | ~22/hr |
| Lyrids | 22 April | 18/hr | 29% | ~14/hr |
| Eta Aquariids | 6 May | 50/hr | 83% | ~10/hr |
| Southern Delta Aquariids | 30 July | 25/hr | 100% | ~5/hr |
| Perseids | 12 August | 100/hr | 0% | ~100/hr |
| Draconids | 8 October | 10/hr | 7% | ~10/hr |
| Southern Taurids | 10 October | 5/hr | 0% | ~5/hr |
| Orionids | 21 October | 20/hr | 73% | ~4/hr |
| Northern Taurids | 12 November | 5/hr | 8% | ~5/hr |
| Leonids | 17 November | 15/hr | 47% | ~8/hr |
| Geminids | 14 December | 150/hr | 22% | ~120/hr |
| Ursids | 22 December | 10/hr | 95% | ~2/hr |
The showers in detail
QuadrantidsAsteroid 2003 EH1 · 41 km/s
A very sharp peak — the window of high activity lasts only a few hours, so timing matters more than for any other shower.
LyridsComet C/1861 G1 Thatcher · 49 km/s
The oldest recorded shower — Chinese records go back to 687 BC. Modest rates, but it occasionally produces unexpected outbursts.
Eta AquariidsComet 1P/Halley · 66 km/s
Debris from Halley's Comet. Fast meteors with long trains, strongly favouring the southern hemisphere.
Southern Delta AquariidsComet 96P/Machholz · 41 km/s
A long, flat maximum rather than a sharp peak, and it overlaps the early Perseids.
PerseidsComet 109P/Swift–Tuttle · 59 km/s
The most watched shower of the year — warm August nights, high rates and frequent fireballs.
DraconidsComet 21P/Giacobini–Zinner · 20 km/s
Unusual in two ways: best in the evening rather than before dawn, and capable of rare, spectacular storms.
OrionidsComet 1P/Halley · 66 km/s
Halley's other shower. Fast and often bright, with a broad plateau around the peak.
Southern TauridsComet 2P/Encke · 27 km/s
Low rates but a high proportion of fireballs — worth watching for quality rather than quantity.
Northern TauridsComet 2P/Encke · 29 km/s
The second Encke stream. Slow, bright meteors, overlapping the southern branch for weeks.
LeonidsComet 55P/Tempel–Tuttle · 71 km/s
The fastest meteors of any major shower, and the source of history's great meteor storms roughly every 33 years.
GeminidsAsteroid 3200 Phaethon · 35 km/s
The most reliable and richest shower of the year, and one of only two from an asteroid rather than a comet.
UrsidsComet 8P/Tuttle · 33 km/s
Overshadowed by the Geminids a week earlier, and circumpolar from northern latitudes so the radiant never sets.
Why the Moon matters more than the rate
A shower's headline number is its zenithal hourly rate: what one observer would see under a perfectly dark sky with the radiant overhead. Almost nobody ever sees that number. The single largest reduction is moonlight — a full moon can cut a usable count by eighty percent, which is why the Geminids at 150/hr under a bright moon can be worse viewing than the Lyrids at 18/hr under a dark one.
The table above pairs each peak with the actual lunar phase for that night, computed from the same engine behind the lunar calendar. Check it before you set an alarm.
Common questions
- How many meteor showers are there in a year?
- Twelve principal showers on the IMO working list, plus dozens of minor ones. The Perseids in August and the Geminids in December are the two richest.
- What is ZHR?
- Zenithal Hourly Rate — the number of meteors a single observer would see per hour under a perfectly dark sky with the radiant directly overhead. Real counts are almost always lower, mostly because of moonlight and light pollution.
- Why do meteor showers happen at the same time each year?
- Because Earth crosses the same debris streams on the same days of its orbit. The dust was shed by a comet or asteroid, and the planet ploughs through it annually within a day or so.