Quadrantid meteor shower 2027: when to look in 16 cities, India included

The Quadrantids, the first big meteor shower of 2027, peak on Monday 4 January at about 03:25 UT (Universal Time, the same as GMT). That's 3:25 AM in London, 10:25 PM on Sunday 3 January in New York and 8:55 AM in India. The peak lasts only a few hours and the Moon is a thin crescent that comes up late, so watch on the night of Sunday 3 to Monday 4 January, after midnight and before the sky starts to brighten.

I worked out every local time on this page on 20 October 2026 with the astronomy code inside Orbit, the Mac app I make. As a check, timeanddate puts New York's moonrise that morning at 4:57 AM and my sums put it at 4:58, which is about the size of error to expect.

When is the Quadrantid peak in 2027, and how long does it last?

The International Meteor Organization's 2027 calendar puts the maximum at 03:25 UT on 4 January, give or take about two and a half hours, and lists the Quadrantids as the first of the year's large annual showers. They're active from 28 December to 12 January, with a zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) of 80 that can vary from about 60 to 200.

The peak is short, a few hours (the American Meteor Society says about six), because Earth cuts across this stream of grit at a right angle instead of running along it (NASA). Geminid peaks stay strong for 10 to 12 hours in a typical year, by the IMO's count. The Quadrantids are over in a few.

London gets the peak at 3:25 AM on Monday with the radiant, the spot the meteors seem to fly out of, 44 degrees up. Berlin gets it at 4:25 AM with the radiant at 52. New York gets it at 10:25 PM on Sunday with the radiant 4 degrees up in the north-north-east, which in most of the city means behind a building. In Denver and Los Angeles it hasn't risen yet, and in India it's broad daylight. So this year Europe watches the peak itself (the AMS says the timing favours Europe and western Asia), the US 3 to 10 hours after it, India 3 to 6 and a half hours before, and Seoul and Tokyo 6 to 11 hours before.

Quadrantids 2027 and the Moon

At the peak the Moon is a waning crescent, 12% lit, and New Moon follows on 7 January (timeanddate; that's the UT date, and the early hours of the 8th in India and East Asia). It rises between about 3:20 and 6 AM in the northern cities on this page, low in the east-south-east to south-east, nowhere near the radiant. In Reykjavík it doesn't rise at all that day. The IMO calls the moonlight conditions "perfect".

You'll see 18% on the AMS calendar and anything from 9 to 16% on timeanddate, because a crescent this thin loses about 6 points of light a day and each site measures at a different hour. In 2027 the other two big showers aren't so lucky: the Perseids get a waxing Moon and the Geminids a full one.

What time to watch the Quadrantids in your city

The radiant is in the northern part of the constellation Boötes. While it's below about 20 degrees (two fists at arm's length), most of the shower is lost under the horizon, so each window below starts when the radiant clears 20 degrees and ends when dawn begins to lighten the sky (the Sun 18 degrees down).

The radiant climbs all night, so in every northern city the last dark hour is the best one. In New York it's 12 degrees up at midnight, 44 at 4 AM and about 60 when dawn starts. In London it ends up almost overhead at about 8:30 AM, which would be lovely if the Sun weren't up by then. In Reykjavík it never drops below 23 degrees, so the whole dark night counts, peak included.

Sydney is out of luck. The radiant gets 7 degrees up at most, at 9:24 AM in broad daylight, and stays below the horizon through every dark hour.

If Sunday is cloudy, try Monday night, but expect far fewer: the peak is only hours wide. The IMO does note that bright fireballs have been seen even a few days after the peak, so a clear Monday is still worth a look.

Which way to look: north-east, near the Big Dipper's handle

Find the Big Dipper, then follow the curve of its handle away from the bowl until you reach Arcturus, the bright orange star. Boötes is the long kite with Arcturus at its point. The radiant makes a triangle with Alkaid, the star at the tip of the handle, and the far end of the kite: about a fist and a half from Alkaid and about one fist from the end of the kite, on the side towards Polaris. There are no bright stars in that patch, which makes it easy to look straight past. If the Big Dipper is new to you, how to find the North Star starts with it.

You don't have to stare at the radiant. Meteors turn up all over the sky, and if you trace one backwards it points to that patch.

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A closer look

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Night sky facing north-east with thin constellation lines. The Big Dipper is upper left, Arcturus is labelled upper right at the tip of a kite-shaped figure, and Polaris is labelled low on the left, above dark hills marked N, NE and E.

Quadrantid meteor shower 2027 in India: time and direction

You can see them from India if you don't mind an alarm on a Monday. From Bengaluru the radiant clears 20 degrees at 3:52 AM and is 35 degrees up when dawn starts at 5:27 AM, all in the north-east, three and a half to five hours before the 8:55 AM peak. Delhi gets the longest stretch, about three hours.

Bengaluru is my city, and its lights wash out most of the stars and the fainter meteors with them, so if you can get out of town, go.

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A closer look

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Night sky facing east with thin constellation lines. Arcturus is labelled upper left, Spica top right, and Venus right of centre, with a thin crescent labelled Moon 13% below it and Antares under that, above dark hills marked NE, E and SE.

How many Quadrantids an hour can you see?

Fewer than the ZHR suggests. That number assumes a perfect observer under a perfectly dark sky with the radiant straight overhead, which I explain in the Geminid guide. The AMS, more down to earth, expects about 25 an hour under dark skies.

By my arithmetic, correcting the ZHR for the radiant's height, the peak in London gives about 55 an hour under a properly dark sky far from any town, about 18 from a suburb and about 9 from a city. For New York, Bengaluru and the rest, watching hours away from the peak, expect fewer again. I haven't tried to put a number on that.

Recent years have mostly come in at the low end: the 2022, 2023 and 2025 peaks were in the lower part of that 60 to 200 range, the IMO says. The meteor modeller Jérémie Vaubaillon notes that the stream is slightly shifted this year, which might give a boost. I'd plan for the low end.

What is the Quadrantid meteor shower?

It's grit shed by the asteroid 2003 EH1, a rock about 3 km across. The Lowell Observatory's LONEOS survey found it on 6 March 2003, and the astronomer Peter Jenniskens worked out that it feeds the shower (NASA). It goes round the Sun every 5.5 years and swings out nearly as far as Jupiter's orbit (JPL). It has a catalogue number, 196256, but still no name.

The shower's name comes from Quadrans Muralis, a constellation the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande drew up in 1795 and the International Astronomical Union left off its official list in 1922. The radiant now sits in Boötes.

How to watch the Quadrantids

Before you head in, look low in the south-east (east-south-east from India). The brilliant point there is Venus, with the crescent Moon near it. The Leonids in November and the Geminids in December come first, if you'd like a practice run.

What Orbit for Mac shows on Quadrantid night

Orbit for Mac draws the real sky over your city behind your desktop icons: the Big Dipper and Boötes as thin constellation lines, Arcturus and Polaris named when Labels on the Sky is on, and the Moon in its true phase. If you check your Mac before heading out, set Facing to East. On a January morning that shows Arcturus and Boötes over your own city, and the crescent and Venus once they're up, like the Bengaluru picture above. It doesn't draw meteors or send meteor alerts. The small Moon in the menu bar shows tonight's phase too.

Orbit is $6.99 once (₹699 in India), no subscription, for macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon and Intel, on the Mac App Store.