How To Know When Meteor Showers Happen

Ever wondered if you just saw a meteor shower happen?  You're outside on a clear night, away from city lights, and whoosh!  A bright light streaks across the sky.  Was it a meteor?  Or just a satellite reflecting sunlight from orbit?  There are a few ways you can distinguish meteors from satellites.

First, meteor showers occur at predictable times of year.  Second, a meteor shower involves multiple meteors, sometimes appearing as fast as one meteor per minute.  Third, most meteors streak across the sky very rapidly, the glowing trails lasting for only a second or so.   In contrast, satellites orbit constantly but they travel alone, and they cross the sky more slowly than meteors, often appearing more like a moving dot than a long streak of light.  So if you only see one bright flash that lasts for several seconds, chances are you saw a satellite flare, not a meteor.

If you want to see a meteor shower, how can you know when one will happen?  The most spectacular meteor showers are quite predictable, so look online for astronomy websites that have meteor shower calendars, like the one run by the International Meteor Organization.  If a really splendid meteor shower is predicted, many newspapers and radio shows will alert their audiences and recommend good meteor viewing spots in the local area.  Most years, the most visible meteor shower is the Perseid shower, which peaks on August 12.  Another good time to see meteors is during the Leonid shower, which occurs in mid-November.  Every few decades the Leonid meteor shower turns into a meteor storm, in which you can get a thousand meteors in an hour!  There are smaller meteor showers occurring throughout the year, but the Perseid and Leonid showers are probably your best chance to see meteors.

Not all meteors occur in showers, but you'd have to be pretty lucky to see a solo meteor.  During a meteor shower, though, you pretty much can't miss as long as it's dark enough.  So get yourself to a place without city lights, hope for a cloudless night, and spread out a blanket beneath the open sky.  Let your eyes adjust to the dark and settle back to watch for meteors.  During the peak of a typical Perseid meteor shower, you can expect to see about one meteor per minute.

In a shower the meteors all appear to burst from a single point in the sky, called the "radiant point".  Meteor showers are usually named after the constellation in which their radiant point is located (e.g. Perseus or Leo).  Keep your eyes on that constellation to catch the most meteors, then watch them streak across the sky in a dazzling trail of fire.  Happy skygazing!