Meteor shower calendar: best night and hour from your city

Pick the city you watch from and get the next peak of each of the ten major meteor showers: the night, the best hour to look, how many meteors a dark sky would show then, and whether the Moon is in the way. For anyone planning a night out under the stars. Free, no account, nothing stored.

What it does, and why it is here

A meteor shower calendar gives dates, but the same peak is a different night from each place. The radiant, the point a shower's meteors seem to come from, can stand high over one city and never rise over another; the Moon can be up at midnight and set by four; and in a northern summer the sky may never get dark at all. What you would actually see depends on all three.

The tool takes each peak where the calendar of the International Meteor Organization (IMO) puts it and works out that night from your city: when it is dark enough, when the radiant is high with the Moon out of the way, and what hourly rate that leaves.

What you fill in

One field, City. Type a name and pick it from the suggestions: the choice fills in the latitude, longitude and IANA time zone the answer is computed from, and the button stays inactive until a suggestion is picked. Enter the place you will watch from, since a trip south or north changes which radiants rise and how dark the nights get. The twelve months start today at that place, and every time is local there, daylight saving time applied.

What you get back

First, the next good night: the next peak with a good outlook, with the date and time of its best hour and the rate a dark sky would show then. If the twelve months hold none, the line names the next shower seen from here instead, however moonlit. Then a table of the twelve months, one row per shower, in the order the peaks come:

• Shower, with its parent body: the comet or asteroid whose debris the Earth crosses.
• Night of: the evening the peak night begins, and its dark hours, while the Sun is more than 12° below the horizon, such as “dark 8:30 PM–6:50 AM”. A night that never gets that dark shows none, and hours after midnight belong to the next morning.
• Best hour, to the nearest ten minutes, with the radiant's height then. It is picked within the dark hours by weighing the radiant's height against the Moon: with a bright Moon up, an hour with the radiant a little lower and the Moon set can win.
• Meteors: the hourly rate one observer could count then under a dark, clear sky, with the zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) below it. The rate is the ZHR times the sine of the radiant's height: from Paris, the Geminids' radiant stands 74° high at 2:50 AM, and 150 × sin 74° gives 144 an hour.
• Moon: its lit fraction that night, and whether it is up or set at the best hour.
• Outlook: good when the Moon is set or under 30% lit; fair (moonlit) when it is up and 30 to 70% lit; poor (bright Moon) when it is up and 70% lit or more; not from here when the radiant is under 10° at the best hour, or the sky never gets dark.

Under the table, Add to my calendar downloads the answer as an .ics file, and Subscribe (updates itself) gives your calendar an address it re-reads every day, recomputed each time, so next year's peaks appear as this year's pass. Each night visible from your city becomes a two-hour event centered on the best hour, titled like “Perseids peak — up to 92/h”, with the radiant's height, the Moon, the meteors' speed and the ZHR in its notes.

What it does not do

• It does not know the weather: clouds, haze and city lights are not in the rate.
• It does not forecast a shower's strength. The ZHR is the IMO's usual value at the peak, a ceiling; the Draconids and the Leonids vary widely from year to year, and outbursts are not predicted.
• It gives the peak night only. The nights before and after, when a shower is still active at lower rates, are not computed.
• It follows the ten major showers, not the minor ones.
• It reports the Moon beside the rate rather than folding it in, and it gives the radiant's height, not the direction to face.
• It keeps nothing: the city is used for the answer and forgotten, though the subscription address carries the city and its coordinates.

The ten showers, with the IMO values the tool uses

Activity period, ZHR, speed at entry into the atmosphere and parent body are the IMO values the tool holds. The peak is what the tool computed on September 27, 2026, in UTC; it moves by some hours from one year to the next, so its date can slip by a day.

Questions

When is the next meteor shower I can see?

The first line of the answer names it: the next good night from your city, with its date and best hour, or, if the year has none, the next shower seen from there at all. The table below lists all ten in the order they come.

What time is best to watch a meteor shower?

The best hour in the table, which for most showers falls between midnight and dawn. From Paris, nine of the ten peaks of 2026–27 are best between 2:50 and 7:20 AM; the Draconids, best at 8:30 PM, are the exception.

Why will I see fewer meteors than the ZHR?

Because the ZHR assumes a perfect sky with the radiant straight overhead. The tool scales it by the radiant's height: the Eta Aquariids, with a ZHR of 50, rise only 13° above Paris before dawn and give 11 an hour, against 36 from Sydney. City lights, clouds and the Moon lower the count further.

Can I see the Perseids from the Southern Hemisphere?

Not from Sydney: the tool marks them not from here, because their radiant stays below the horizon while the sky is dark. The Quadrantids, Draconids and Ursids get the same verdict there, while both Aquariid showers do better than from Paris.

Why is a shower “not from here” in the far north?

Because at high latitudes the Sun does not sink 12° below the horizon on spring and summer nights, so the sky never gets dark enough and the night shows no dark hours. From Tromsø, in northern Norway, the Lyrids, Eta Aquariids, Southern Delta Aquariids and Perseids are all not from here, while the Geminids and Quadrantids come out good.

Does a bright Moon ruin a meteor shower?

Only while it is up, which is why the tool checks it at the best hour. From Paris, the Perseids of August 2027 fall under an 84% Moon, yet their outlook is good: the Moon has set by 5:10 AM. The Ursids of December 2026, with a 98% Moon up at their best hour, are poor.

Sources and further reading

• IMO Meteor Shower Calendar 2027: the International Meteor Organization's yearly reference for peaks, rates and activity periods.
• American Meteor Society: Meteor Shower Calendar: the showers of the season, with notes on each.
• Zenithal hourly rate: how the ZHR is defined, and why the rate falls with the radiant.