Leonids meteor shower
Next peak: 17 November 2026, 23:00 UTC. Up to 15 meteors an hour under an ideally dark sky.
The fastest of all meteors, from the Sickle of Leo, from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Roughly every 33 years a meteor storm occurs; in 1833 they rained so densely that the shower was discovered that way.
The radiant lies in the constellation Leo. The meteors appear all over the sky, though; their trails only point back to it.
Peaks until 2030
| Peak (UTC) | Moon | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| 17 Nov 2026, 23:00 | 55 % | fair |
| 18 Nov 2027, 05:00 | 80 % | poor, bright moon |
| 17 Nov 2028, 12:00 | 1 % | good, little moonlight |
| 17 Nov 2029, 18:00 | 90 % | poor, bright moon |
| 18 Nov 2030, 00:00 | 54 % | fair |
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 06:00 local time, the radiant 60° up
- New York: around 05:30 local time, the radiant 69° up
- Sydney: around 04:30 local time, the radiant 21° 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.