Meteor shower set to peak this week with ‘two shooting stars a minute’

A meteor shower will light up the skies this week with ‘two shooting stars a minute’.

Stargazers will get to see ‘one of the best meteor showers of the year’ as it is set to peak on January 3rd and 4th.

This Wednesday and Thursday, The Quadrantid Meteor Shower will light up the night sky with its spectacular shooting stars, displaying a maximum rate of 110 meteors per hour on a clear night’, according to Royal Museums Greenwich.

The impressive display is created as the fragments of dust and rocks in space crash into the Earth’s atmosphere at 70 kilometres per second and vaporise.

For skywatchers to be able to see it, conditions will need to be clear. Gazers should look up after midnight and look out for the Big Dipper constellation.

The Quadrantid Meteor Shower is named after the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis (the Mural Quadrant), which belonged to a constellation system created by the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande, in 1795.

It depicted a wall-mounted quadrant with which he and his nephew Michel Lefrançois de Lalande had charted the celestial sphere, and was named Le Mural in the French atlas.

The radiant point of the Quadrantids, the apparent location from where the meteors seem to originate, was located within the now defunct constellation.

This meteor shower is thought to originate from the debris left by the asteroid 2003 EH1, which is believed to be a piece from a comet which broke apart several centuries ago.

As Earth moves through the debris left by the comet, the particles enter its atmosphere where they burn up and cause a spectacular meteor shower.

Those who wish to witness this impressive display can see the Quadrantids from late December into early January, with peak activity usually around January 3rd or 4th.

And the best time to catch the shower is around the early hours just before dawn.

However, the peak of this meteor shower is relatively short compared to others, so to catch a glimpse requires clear skies and favourable weather conditions so as not to miss out.

According to Royal Museums Greenwich: “For the best conditions, you want to find a safe location away from street lights and other sources of light pollution.

“The meteors can be seen in all parts of the sky, so it’s ideal to go to a wide open space where you can scan the night sky with your eyes.”

Observers in the Northern Hemisphere are best suited to view the Quadrantids.