Watch the Quadrantid meteor shower online
The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak early Thursday morning, and if you don’t want to face the January cold to enjoy the show, you can watch it right here, thanks to a live broadcast from NASA.
Unfortunately, you’ll still have to wake up in the early-morning darkness to see the show live. According to Spaceweather.com, the best viewing will probably be from 3 to 5 a.m. PST on Thursday.
The Quadrantid is a meteor shower that occurs each January when the Earth passes through debris left from comet 2003 EH1. The bits of rocky debris will enter our atmosphere at 90,000 mph and burn up 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, NASA said in a release.
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In theory, the show should be pretty spectacular -- the Quadrantid has a maximum rate of about 100 meteors an hour, but the glare from the waning gibbous moon may make the fainter of those meteors hard to see. Sky & Telescope predicts that sky watchers either out in the field, or online, can expect to see about one shooting star a minute.
The Quadrantid meteor shower was first seen in 1825 and is named after the constellation of Quadrans Muralis, which is no longer recognized by astronomers. The meteors will appear to radiate from between the constellations Boötes and Draco.
Happy viewing!
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