The Magnificent
Meteor Shower Calendar

Keen to know more about the meteor shower calendar?

The International Meteor Organization has a meteor calendar available in most languages, including Engish, Russian, French and Spanish.

Calendars are also available for the following years: 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 to 2011.

For those that prefer to download the shower calendars, they can do so in PDF format.

Data is taken from International Meteor Organizations visual meteor database which is the single most accurate listing available in the world for naked eye meteor observing.

Of course, there are so many meteor showers that cannot be detected the list will never be really complete!

Meteor Shower Calendar Warnings

Meteor activity is collected an analyzed regularly. The meteor calendar is arranged in quadrants, January to March, April to June, July to September and October to December.

Complex illustrations do mention Draconids, Radiants, Drifts (and other science-based verbiage) but you don't need to be familiar with astronomy (and the language) to understand how to read the coordinates!

Meteor shower book and calendar

Before visiting the site, you may want to familiarize yourself by reading the handbook for visual meteor observers by Jurgen Rendtel, Rainer Arlt and Alastair McBeath.

The site is very interesting, with moonless maxima for the quadrantids, a-centaurids and Aquarids but when the Perseids peak near full moon in August and the Orionids in October, the Leonids of November are even worse placed with the Geminids in December.

Not to worry though, the Draconid epoch will still be partly observable.

Cosmic Phenomena?

The calendar states that a swarm enhancement from the Taurids will be visible in November as the Ursid peak towards year's end.

Cosmic phenomena book

There will be plenty of minor meteor showers to observe and the shower calendar will highlight the times. There will be even weaker activity throughout the year that can be viewed with imaging, video, radar or telescopic observations.

Mandatory Viewing

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This type of viewing is mandatory in order to rule out the omnipresent background sporadics.

The meteor shower calendar is as accurate as possible, but it is essential for the viewer to understand that in many cases, such maxima are not known more precisely than to the nearest 1 degree of solar longitude.

There will also be variations in individual showers from mean past returns so some predictions are merely guides to determine when major shower peaks can be expected.

The bimonthly journal published by International Meteor Organization (IMO) will indicate any changes and updates made to the calendar after publishing.

There are also companion charts available on the website to assist you with the location for ANT (Antihelion source) and other nearby shower radiants to compliment the numerical positions of the table.

Be sure to tell your friends who are interested in meteor astronomy about the International Meteor Organization meteor calendar available online.

The books and calendars on this page can be found here.

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