Draconids meteor shower
Next peak: 09 October 2027, 07:00 UTC. Up to 10 meteors an hour under an ideally dark sky.
Slow meteors from the head of Draco, from Comet Giacobini-Zinner. Usually quiet but unpredictable: in 1933 and 1946 thousands fell in an hour. Best in the evening, not the morning.
The radiant lies in the constellation Draco. The meteors appear all over the sky, though; their trails only point back to it.
Peaks until 2030
| Peak (UTC) | Moon | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| 09 Oct 2026, 01:00 | 3 % | good, little moonlight |
| 09 Oct 2027, 07:00 | 67 % | poor, bright moon |
| 08 Oct 2028, 13:00 | 79 % | poor, bright moon |
| 08 Oct 2029, 19:00 | 2 % | good, little moonlight |
| 09 Oct 2030, 01:00 | 94 % | poor, bright moon |
Moon: how much of its disc is lit. The nights before and after the peak are often hardly weaker.
When you see the most
- London: around 19:45 local time, the radiant 68° up
- New York: around 19:30 local time, the radiant 64° up
- Sydney: the radiant does not rise in the dark that night
Best far from lights; give your eyes a quarter of an hour to adapt, no binoculars, with as much sky in view as possible. The higher the radiant, the more meteors.