New Year Meteor Shower Brightens the Skies This Weekend! How to Watch

This weekend, remember to look to the skies: the Quadrantid meteor shower will be in full force. Now, we're taking a look at how best to view the sky show.

The Quadrantids are actually the first meteor shower of the year. Unlike other meteor showers, though, they're not the result of debris from an ordinary comet burning up in the atmosphere. Instead, the debris comes from a newly-discovered object, called 2003 EHI.

The Quadrantids are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. In this case, though, you won't find the constellation Quadrans Muralis, the constellation it was named after. This "constellation" is actually a space that lies between our present day constellations of Bootes and Draco.

The meteor shower itself will peak at 8 a.m. GMT on Monday, Jan. 4 this year, or 3 a.m. EST. This means that if you stay up this Sunday, you may get a good chance of seeing the sky show.

The shower itself has a chance of producing about 120 meteors an hour. However, the peak can range anywhere from 60 to 200 meteors per hour. Fortunately, the weather is favorable to view the meteor shower in many parts of the United States. This means if you get a chance, remember to look up on Sunday night to catch a glimpse of some of the meteors in the first meteor shower of the year.

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