Overview
- The shower reaches its main peak overnight May 5–6, with NASA’s Bill Cooke advising watchers to head out around 2 a.m. local as a waning gibbous Moon will wash out faint meteors.
- Southern Hemisphere observers can expect the strongest display with higher rates, while northern viewers will see fewer meteors and have a shorter pre-dawn window.
- Under dark skies the shower can reach about 50 meteors per hour in good years, though moonlight this week will cut the visible total for most locations.
- Eta Aquariid meteors hit the atmosphere at about 66 kilometers per second, often leaving quick, bright trails that can linger for a moment.
- The shower comes from debris shed by Halley’s Comet, whose next return is in 2061, and you can improve your view by blocking the Moon, scanning a wide area away from the radiant, avoiding screens, and skipping binoculars or telescopes.