New York — First year Supermoon and Meteor shower They will coincide in the January sky, but the light from one may dwarf the other.
The Quadrantid meteor shower will reach its peak Friday night into Saturday morning. According to the American Meteor Society. In dark skies during peak, skygazers typically see about 25 meteors per hour, but this time they will likely see fewer than 10 meteors per hour due to the light of Saturday’s supermoon.
“The biggest enemy to enjoying a meteor shower is the full moon,” said Mike Shanahan, planetarium director at Liberty Science Center in New Jersey.
Meteor showers occur when fast-moving space rocks collide with Earth’s atmosphere, burning up and leaving fiery tails in their wake — the end of a “shooting star.” Few meteors can be seen on any given night, but predictable showers appear annually when Earth passes through dense streams of cosmic debris.
The supermoon phenomenon occurs when the full moon is closest to Earth in its orbit. This makes it appear up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than this year’s faint moon, according to NASA. This difference may be difficult to notice with the naked eye.
The supermoon, like all full moons, can be seen in clear skies everywhere at night. On the other hand, quadrilaterals can be seen mainly from the Northern Hemisphere. Both can be viewed without any special equipment.
To spot the quads, go out in the early evening away from city lights and watch for fireballs before the moon hits the party, said Jack Benitez of the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences. Skygazers can also try looking during the early morning hours on Sunday.
Wait until your eyes get used to the dark, and don’t look at your phone. The space rocks will appear as fast-moving white dots and appear over the entire sky.
Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the fireballs come. The Quadrantids – space debris from asteroid 2003 EH1 – are named after a constellation that is no longer known.
The next major meteor shower, called Lyrids, is scheduled to occur in April.
Supermoons occur several times a year and come in clusters, taking advantage of the sweet spot in the moon’s elliptical orbit. Saturday night’s event ends a four-month series that began in October. There won’t be another supermoon until the end of 2026.
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