Celestial Calendar: When Will the Meteor Showers Illuminate the Skies in 2025?

Every year, we are lucky enough to be able to observe, from Earth, magnificent spectacles: showers of shooting stars. Well, more specifically, it's about meteor showers. There are some throughout the year, so in order not to miss them, here is our celestial calendar for the year 2025.

No. Obviously. First of all, even if we call it rain, it is not created during the water cycle on Earth. And then, this phenomenon, although it is visible on Earth, does not happen on our planet, but in space.

Thus, what we call a shower of shooting stars or meteors is in fact the phenomenon observed when the Earth crosses, during its orbit around the Sun, an area in which there is debris from a comet in particular or an asteroid. And the shooting stars that we observe are these famous debris that a celestial body has left behind.

When will the next meteor shower occur?

Well, imagine that you won't have to wait very long since the peak of the next shower of shooting stars, that of the Quadrantids, will take place on January 2 and 3, 2025.

The one considered by NASA as “one of the best meteor showers of the year” will yield about 80 meteors per hour at its peak, a particularly high average compared to other shooting star showers during the year.

And the others?

Then follow, among the heaviest rains:

• The Lyrids from April 14 to 30 with a peak at 18 meteors per hour between April 21 and 22, 2025.
• The Eta Aquarids from April 19 to May 28 with a larger shooting star shower of 50 meteors per hour between May 5 and 6.
• The Delta Aquarids from July 12 to August 23 where 25 meteors per hour will be visible between July 30 and 31.
• The Perseidssurely the best-known shower of shooting stars, between July 17 and August 24 with a peak at 100 meteors per hour between August 11 and 12.
• The Orionids from October 2 to November 7 which will give us a light peak of 20 meteors per hour between October 20 and 21.
• The Leonids from November 6 to 30 with a fairly weak peak of 10 to 15 meteors per hour between November 17 and 18.
• The Geminidsthe largest meteor shower of the year in terms of peak. Indeed, “falling” from December 4 to 20, this rain will offer us an impressive peak of 150 meteors per hour between December 13 and 14.

How are the names of shooting star showers chosen?

You will surely have noticed that the names of shooting star showers are sometimes evocative. If they do not refer to an astrological sign for example, they take their name from the stars.

Indeed, we will give a shower of shooting stars the name of the constellation from which it seems to originate, what we call the radiant, even if this is not the case. This simply allows us to know which stars we have in front of our eyes when it “rains”.

Thus, the Leonids refer to the constellation Leo; the Perseids, to that of Perseus; the Orionids, to that of Orion; the Aquarids, in the constellation Aquarius (the astrological sign is said Aquarius in English); the Geminids, to that of Gemini; the Lyrids, to that of Lyra.

Finally, perhaps more complicated, but the shower of shooting stars of the Quadrantids sees its radiant located in the constellation Bouvier.

Source: NASA / StarWalk