The Eta Aquariid Meteor Shower Will Light Up the Night Sky This Week
Phil Plait
Mon, April 28, 2025 at 4:10 PM MST
5 min read by
In early May 2025 the annually recurring Eta Aquariid meteor shower will grace the night sky. The meter shower peaks on May 5 and May 6, but the best time to watch it is actually the week prior to avoid interference from the waxing moon. Depending on your location, you can expect to see anywhere from 10 to as many as 50 shooting stars per hour.
While approximately 30 meteor showers are visible from Earth each year, the Eta Aquariids (pronounced ah-QUARE-ee-id) have perhaps the most famous parent of them all: Comet Halley. The bright comet was the first to be predicted by astronomers as a recurring event and can be seen passing Earth approximately every 75 years.
Every May, our planet moves through the Halley’s jettisoned detritus, producing the Eta Aquariid shower. Each meteoroid is smaller than a grain of sand, but they’re moving at over 200,000 kilometers per hour, so they have a lot of energy and generate a lot of light when they streak across the heavens. No matter how often you may see it, the excitement of watching this incredible night sky event never fades.
Below, astronomer and Condé Nast Traveler contributor Phil Plait breaks down everything you need to know to see the meteor shower this May, including an overview of the science behind what causes this annual cosmic rainfall.
When is the best time to see the meteor shower?
The Eta Aquariids is active from April 19 to May 28. However, it’s important to plan around the moon phases when scheduling your viewing—as always, the darker the sky the better.
On May 5 and 6 the moon sets at around 3:00 a.m. and will be more than half full, so it will light up the sky before setting. It gets brighter and sets later every night leading up to the full moon on May 12, which means the week preceding May 6 may be your best window for catching the show.
Showers tend to peak after midnight—this is when the night side of Earth is facing into the direction of its orbit around the sun, so we see the meteors head-on (rather like how rain hits your front windshield when you drive in a storm rather than the rear window). This means the best hours for viewing are late at night or early morning before dawn.
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There’s plenty of sightseeing to do in the sky, too.
Where can you see the Eta Aquariid shower?
The shower should be visible anywhere on Earth, but the Eta Aquariid radiant (more on that later) is somewhat low in the sky for most people in North America, so those located in the United States will typically only be able to see between 10 and 30 meteors per hour.
The radiant is directly overhead of people on the equator, meaning the best view will be from countries like Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Uganda, Kenya, and Indonesia. From here, seeing 50 meteors per hour is typical.
To see the shower, you want wide-open skies with a clear view. Try to avoid nearby trees and buildings. The meteors themselves zip across the sky pretty rapidly, taking less than a second to burn up completely, so it’s easy to miss one. The more sky you can see the better odds you’ll have of catching one.
You also don’t need any special equipment—in fact, binoculars and telescopes restrict your view of the sky, so you should avoid them. Try to get away from city lights and any light pollution, which can wash out fainter meteors and reduce the number you see. I suggest using a blanket or chaise lounge to relax on so you can lie back, relax, and enjoy the show. It’s more fun to have friends or family to share the experience with, too.
What causes a meteor shower?
Surprisingly, meteor showers come from comets—objects in space made of dust and rocks held together by ice. When comets are far from the sun they are solid, but as they near the warmth of our star the ice turns directly to a gas, releasing the rockier bits. These pieces (which we call meteoroids) orbit the sun along with the comet, slowly migrating away and creating a long stream of debris.
When Earth’s orbit intersects that debris, the material burns up as it slams into our atmosphere about 55 to 62 miles above the ground. These burning bits are what we call meteors (or, poetically if not terribly accurately, shooting stars). On a typical night of the year you can expect to see five or six meteors per hour, shrapnel from ancient asteroid collisions in the solar system.
Sometimes, though, the meteors come in swarms, and we call these events meteor showers. Because the two orbital paths intersect at a specific point in space, meteor showers like Eta Aquariid repeat every year at around the same time (here is a terrific interactive graphic that shows how that works).
Due to perspective, the meteors all appear to come from a single point in the sky called the radiant. It’s similar to how lights on the side of a tunnel all seem to come from a point ahead of you as you drive through. The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, but all seem to trace their origin back to the radiant. For this shower, that spot is near the star Eta Aquarius, hence the shower’s name.
Watching a meteor shower is a wonderful way to spend an evening—especially as the weather gets warmer—so be sure to get outside this week and make a wish (or 50) on the parade of shooting stars. Then, get ready for the Perseids meteor shower in August, the most popular of them all.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
