December 17 – December 26 · Ursa Minor
Ursids
A quiet solstice shower
Don't miss the Ursids peak.
Free — one push the evening a shower peaks, and only when the sky is clear.
See the Ursids from your location
See the exact local peak time and how high the radiant climbs from where you are.
What is the Ursids meteor shower?
A quiet shower peaking around the December solstice, often overshadowed by the Geminids a week earlier. Circumpolar and best from the far Northern Hemisphere.
When do the Ursids peak in 2026?
The Ursids peak on the night of December 22, 2026. Under ideal dark skies with the radiant high overhead they can produce up to 10 meteors an hour — the number you'll actually see depends on your latitude, the moon, and how dark your sky is.
Activity, night by night
Modeled nightly rates across the whole 2026 window — ZHR-scale, before your sky’s discounts. Gold marks the peak night.
Ursids at a glance
Computed 2026-08-21 · times in UTC
Sources: International Meteor Organization · IAU Meteor Data Center · astronomy-engine v2.1.19
Where the Ursids come from
The Ursids are debris shed by 8P/Tuttle, a comet. Each year the Earth ploughs through this ancient trail of dust and the specks burn up in our atmosphere as meteors.
How to watch the Ursids
Get away from city lights
Light pollution is the enemy. A dark rural sky can turn a handful of meteors into dozens.
Look up after midnight
Most showers are best between midnight and dawn, when your side of Earth turns to face the debris stream head-on.
Let your eyes adapt
Give your eyes 20 minutes in the dark and put the phone away. Then just watch — meteors can streak across any part of the sky.
Photographing the Ursids
A camera upgrades any Ursids night: it integrates light for twenty seconds while your eye works in fractions of one. The recipe — wide fast lens (14–24 mm, f/1.8–2.8), 15–25 s exposures, ISO 1600–3200, manual focus locked on a bright star, intervalometer firing continuously, long-exposure noise reduction off so no meteor lands in a gap between frames.
The Ursids’s meteors arrive at 33 km/s — slow, long, often bright trails that reward wide framing and patience. Aim 40–60° to the side of the radiant in Ursa Minor, where trails cross the frame at their longest, keep a slice of foreground for scale, and let the rig run: on a peak night expect a meteor in roughly one frame in fifty, and one image worth keeping.
Reading the numbers
What is ZHR?
Zenithal Hourly Rate — the standard yardstick for a shower's strength. It's how many meteors one observer would count per hour under a perfectly dark sky with the radiant directly overhead. A lab condition, not a promise: your real count is always lower.
Why will I see fewer than the ZHR?
Three honest discounts. The radiant is rarely overhead — at 30° altitude half the meteors never clear your horizon. The sky is rarely perfectly dark — city glow and moonlight wash out the faint majority. And clouds take their cut. That's why we quote a realistic range for your sky instead of the headline number.
What is the radiant?
The point the meteors appear to stream away from — pure perspective, like snowflakes fanning out from ahead when you drive through snow at night. Don't stare at it: trails look longest 40–60° away from it. What matters is its height — the higher the radiant, the more meteors above your horizon.
What does the speed (km/s) change?
The look of the show. Fast showers — the Leonids hit the atmosphere at 71 km/s — draw thin, quick streaks that often leave glowing trains. Slow ones, like the 27 km/s Taurids, roll across the sky as long, bright, sometimes orange fireballs.
Dark window vs. best window
The dark window is pure astronomy: the stretch between dusk and dawn when the sun sits far enough below the horizon. The best window is the practical answer — the hours holding at least ~70% of the night's top rate, when it's genuinely worth standing outside.
What is a parent body?
Every shower is the dust trail of one comet or asteroid. When Earth crosses that trail on its yearly lap, the grains burn up as meteors — the Perseids are crumbs of comet Swift–Tuttle, the Geminids of asteroid 3200 Phaethon.
Watch the Ursids from your city
Common questions about the Ursids
When do the Ursids peak in 2026?+
The Ursids reach their maximum on the night of December 22, 2026, though a few meteors are visible from December 17 – December 26.
Where should I look to see the Ursids?+
The meteors radiate from the constellation Ursa Minor, but they streak across the whole sky — you don't need to find the radiant. Just face the darkest part of your sky and take in as much of it as you can.
Do I need a telescope to watch the Ursids?+
No. Meteor showers are a naked-eye event — a telescope's narrow view would only work against you. All you need is a dark sky, a reclining chair, and some patience.
What causes the Ursids?+
The Ursids happen when Earth passes through a stream of debris left behind by 8P/Tuttle. The dust grains hit our atmosphere at 33 km/s and burn up as bright streaks of light.
Other meteor showers
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