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January’s skies are set to host the year’s first supermoon and a meteor shower, though the brilliance of one may overshadow the other.
The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks from Friday night into Saturday morning, according to the American Meteor Society.
While dark skies usually offer around 25 meteors per hour, observers are likely to see fewer than 10 this time, owing to the supermoon’s illumination on Saturday.
“The biggest enemy of enjoying a meteor shower is the full moon,” said Mike Shanahan, planetarium director at Liberty Science Center in New Jersey.
Meteor showers happen when speedy space rocks collide with Earth’s atmosphere, burning up and leaving fiery tails in their wake — the end of a “shooting star.” A handful of meteors are visible on any given night, but predictable showers appear annually when Earth passes through dense streams of cosmic debris.
Supermoons occur when a full moon is closer to Earth in its orbit. That makes it appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than the faintest moon of the year, according to NASA. That difference can be tough to notice with the naked eye.
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This 1825 etching provided by the Library of Congress shows an astronomical chart depicting Bootes the Ploughman holding a spear, a sickle, and two dogs, Asterion and Chara, on leashes, a quadrant, and the hair of Berenice forming the constellations. (Sidney Hall/Library of Congress via AP)
Supermoons, like all full moons, are visible in clear skies everywhere that it’s night. The Quadrantids, on the other hand, can be seen mainly from the Northern Hemisphere. Both can be glimpsed without any special equipment.
To spot the Quadrantids, venture out in the early evening away from city lights and watch for fireballs before the moon crashes the party, said Jacque Benitez with the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences. Skygazers can also try looking during early dawn hours on Sunday.
Wait for your eyes to get used to the darkness, and don’t look at your phone. The space rocks will look like fast-moving white dots and appear over the whole sky.
Meteor showers are named for the constellation where the fireballs appear to come from. The Quadrantids — space debris from the asteroid 2003 EH1 — are named for a constellation that’s no longer recognized.
The next major meteor shower, called the Lyrids, is slotted for April.
Supermoons happen a few times a year and come in groups, taking advantage of the sweet spot in the moon’s elliptical orbit. Saturday night’s event ends a four-month streak that started in October. There won’t be another supermoon until the end of 2026.