Ursids meteor shower
Next peak: 22 December 2026, 22:00 UTC. Up to 10 meteors an hour under an ideally dark sky.
A small shower just before Christmas from the Little Bear near Polaris, from Comet Tuttle. As the radiant never sets for most of Europe, you can watch all night.
The radiant lies in the constellation Ursa Minor. The meteors appear all over the sky, though; their trails only point back to it.
Peaks until 2030
| Peak (UTC) | Moon | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| 22 Dec 2026, 22:00 | 98 % | poor, bright moon |
| 23 Dec 2027, 04:00 | 21 % | good, little moonlight |
| 22 Dec 2028, 10:00 | 36 % | fair |
| 22 Dec 2029, 16:00 | 97 % | poor, bright moon |
| 22 Dec 2030, 22:00 | 5 % | 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 06:30 local time, the radiant 63° up
- New York: around 06:00 local time, the radiant 52° 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.