What do you wish for the new year? Quadrantids 2023

Meteor over the Teide National Park (Tenerife), on the night of 13-14 December 2022. Credit: Juan Carlos Casado. High resolution image: https://flic.kr/p/2o6TJy

As part of the dissemination actions of the Interreg EELabs project, in the early hours of January 4th, the sky-live.tv channel will broadcast the maximum activity of the Quadrantid meteor shower from the Teide Observatory (Tenerife) and from Extremadura, under the umbrella of the Extremadura Buenas Noches project.

As every year, 2023 will begin by looking at the sky to share the maximum activity of the Quadrantid meteor shower, which, together with the Geminids and the Perseids, form part of the select group of the most intense meteor showers of the year, with an activity that is usually close to 100 meteors per hour (ZHR, zenithal hourly rates) and that remains constant year after year (Quadrantid activity year 2022 in IMO). This year, their peak activity is expected at 3:40 UTC on 4 January, so the early morning of that day, just before dawn, will be the best time to observe them.

An early morning shower

The Quadrantids show their peak activity in the first week of January. Although we must remember that it will be necessary to wait until well into the early hours of the morning so that the radiant (the point from which the “shooting stars” appear to be born) of this meteor shower is high enough in the sky to make it possible to see them easily.

The place we hope to locate is the constellation of the Boyero, which is located close to the Big Dipper (for this reason, this meteor shower will hardly be visible from the southern hemisphere). Normally, meteor showers are named after their radiant (Perseids after the constellation Perseus, Geminids in Gemini,…). However, the Quadrantids are named after the missing constellation Quadrans Muralis, which was pointed out by the astronomer Joseph Lalande in 1795, and which, although it is no longer recognised by scientists, continues to give its name to this meteor shower.

On average, we are expected to see a meteor every four minutes, some of them very bright if we are in a place without light pollution and with clear horizons. During the early hours of the morning, the almost full Moon will make it difficult to see the faintest meteors, but by the time the shower reaches its peak activity it will have set and will not be a problem.

Daughters of an asteroid

So-called “shooting stars” are actually small dust particles of various sizes, some smaller than grains of sand, that comets leave behind as they orbit the Sun. The resulting stream of particles (called meteoroids), due to the “melting” produced by solar heat, is scattered by the comet’s orbit and is passed by the Earth each year in its orbit around the Sun. During this encounter, the dust particles disintegrate as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed, creating the familiar luminous trails known scientifically as meteors. This is true for most meteor showers, but not for the Quadrantids and Geminids. There is no comet that matches the trajectory of the “debris” cloud. The progenitors of these meteor showers are asteroids: 3200 Phaeton in the case of the Geminids and 2003 EH for the Quadrantids.

Live from the Canary Islands and Extremadura

As part of the dissemination activities of the European Interreg EELabs project (eelabs.eu), the sky-live.tv channel will broadcast live this meteor shower from the Teide Observatory (Tenerife) and from the International Centre for Sports Innovation in the Natural Environment “El Anillo” under the coordination of the Extremadura strategy, Buenas Noches (Good Night). The event will take place in the early hours of Tuesday 4 January at 6:00 UT (local time in the Canary Islands, 7:00 CET, local time in Europe) at https://sky-live.tv/. Although, for those who wish to enjoy this spectacle in the open air, from 02:00 UT, the constellation of the Buoyant Star will be over the horizon, so we will start to see some of these meteors.

“In the last three years the average quadrantid activity has been above 80 meteors per hour. The forecasts for next January 4th are similar. We cannot miss a shower with such a high activity”, says Miquel Serra-Ricart, coordinator of the EELabs project.

EELabs (eelabs.eu) is a project funded by the INTERREG V-A MAC Programme 2014-2020, co-financed by the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) of the European Union, under contract number MAC2/4.6d/238. EELabs involves 5 Macaronesian centres (IAC, ITER, ULPGC, SPEA-Azores, SPEA-Madeira). The objective of EELabs is to create Laboratories to measure the Energy Efficiency of Artificial Night Light in protected natural areas of Macaronesia (Canary Islands, Madeira and Azores).

Audiovisual material

Best quadrantids year 2020 (https://flic.kr/p/2iaZdr7)

Images and videos of meteor showers (https://flic.kr/s/aHsjH2BFa4)

Travel on a Comet – meteoroid formation: https://youtu.be/iCoqxLjMmmU

Quadrantid orbit simulation: https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/Quadrantids