Eta Aquariids meteor shower
Next peak: 06 May 2027, 15:00 UTC. Up to 50 meteors an hour under an ideally dark sky.
Dust of Halley's Comet, which crosses the Earth's orbit twice. Fast meteors, best before dawn. From mid-northern latitudes the radiant stays low; from the southern hemisphere the shower is far richer.
The radiant lies in the constellation Aquarius. The meteors appear all over the sky, though; their trails only point back to it.
Peaks until 2030
| Peak (UTC) | Moon | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| 06 May 2027, 15:00 | 0 % | good, little moonlight |
| 05 May 2028, 21:00 | 89 % | poor, bright moon |
| 06 May 2029, 03:00 | 43 % | fair |
| 06 May 2030, 09:00 | 12 % | good, little moonlight |
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 03:45 local time, the radiant 10° up
- New York: around 04:30 local time, the radiant 21° up
- Sydney: around 05:30 local time, the radiant 47° up
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.