Watch the First Meteor Shower of 2025 Reach Its Peak

The universe has given us abundant holiday light shows: natural fireworks for the winter solstice, northern lights to ring in the new year.It’s rounding out those festivities with the Quadrantids, the first meteor shower of 2025.Bright fireballs from the shower, which is one of the few to be caused by debris from an asteroid, began streaking through our skies on Dec.

26 and are expected to continue through Jan.16.

Their peak activity will occur Jan.2 to 3, or Thursday night into Friday morning.The Quadrantids are best viewed from the Northern Hemisphere and are forecast to be one of the strongest showers this year.

But frigid temperatures, overcast skies and a short peak — just six hours — will make them difficult to spot.To get a hint of when to watch, you can use a meter that relies on data from the Global Meteor Network.It shows how the fireball activity levels increase in real time.Where meteor showers come fromThere is a chance you might see a meteor on any given night, but you are most likely to catch one during a shower.

Meteor showers are caused by Earth passing through the rubble trailing a comet or an asteroid as it swings around the sun.This debris, which can be as small as a grain of sand, leaves behind a glowing stream of light as it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.Meteor showers occur around the same time every year and can last for days or weeks.

But there is only a small window when each shower is at its peak, which happens when Earth reaches the densest part of the cosmic debris.The peak is the best time to look for a shower.

From our point of view on Earth, the meteors will appear to come from the same point in the sky.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already...