The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak this week and could bring up to 120 shooting stars per hour to the night sky. It has the potential to be the strongest meteor shower of 2024, according to the American Meteor Society, but with such a short peak — just six hours — the shower’s climax can often occur in daylight. This year, the predicted peak is 7:53 a.m. EST (12:53 GMT) on Jan. 4, according to EarthSky. That makes the pre-dawn hours — from around 4:53 a.m. EST to dawn —…
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See the Geminid meteor shower 2023 light up the sky in these amazing photos
The Geminid meteor shower stunned in its first of two peak nights in 2023. Photos from around the world showed Geminid meteors streaking through the sky overnight on Wednesday (Dec. 13), and more “shooting stars” are expected on Thursday (Dec. 14). The new moon, only two days old, should allow for peaks of as much as 100 meteors per hour this year, according to SpaceWeather.com. Webcasts are also available to check out the show if you can’t get outside or you’re clouded out. Both the the Slooh telescope network and…
Read MoreDebris from a near-Earth comet could create new meteor shower this week
Earth may experience an entirely new meteor shower this December when our planet enters a stream of the debris left around the sun by a near-Earth comet. These meteors will appear to stream from the direction of the star Lambda-Sculptoris, meaning a potential name for this meteor shower is the “Lambda-Sculptorids.” The progenitor of the potential new meteor shower is Comet 46P/Wirtanen, which was discovered in 1948 and orbits the sun every 5.4 years, much more rapidly than other comets, such as Halley’s Comet — which takes around 75 years…
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