This page was last amended on 31st December, 2011

Meteor showers, January 2012

About meteor showers in general:  

There are essentially two sorts of meteors (colloquially known as "shooting stars") , sporadic meteors and annual meteor showers.

Sporadic meteors appear at random in any part of the sky and at any time of the year, and annual showers are visible only at specific times of the year.  Also annual showers generally appear to come from specific parts of the sky – the “radiants”.  The showers are named after the constellations in which their radiants are found – Geminids, originating in Gemini, Leonids originating in Leo, etc.  The suffix “-ids”, tacked on to the constellation name, means “belonging to” or “connected with”.

But even sporadic meteors are not totally random – there are more seen at some times of the year than at others, and September is known for one of the highest rates – up to 20 sporadic meteors per hour.  On the other hand, many of the meteor showers, as opposed to the sporadics, are associated with comets that shed a dusty debris stream along the comet's orbit. When the Earth travels through this stream at a later date, we see a meteor shower as the dusty debris enters the Earth's atmosphere, burning up at speeds of up to 40 km per second!

Meteor showers in January 2012:

There is one meteor shower this month, the Quadrantids, which peaks in the early hours of 4th January, with up to 80 blue and yellow spectacular meteors per hour.  The Moon sets at about 04:00 UT, so after that time Moonshine will not interfere with the dark sky.   The shower will continue until the dawn Sun rises at about 08:20.