Draconid meteor shower peaks Oct. 8, no late night needed

Here's a meteor shower that doesn't ask you to stay up past your bedtime. The Draconids peak on Oct. 8, and the best viewing window falls a few hours after sunset, according to Space.com.

Draconid meteors streak from Oct. 6 to Oct. 10 as Earth passes through debris left by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, which loops through the inner solar system every 6.6 years, refreshing the meteoroid trail. The shower's radiant, or apparent point of origin, sits in the constellation Draco, the dragon, high in the northwestern sky after sunset in October.

Maximum activity is expected around 9 p.m. ET on Oct. 8, NASA said. For the best show, find a patch of sky about 40 degrees from the radiant, and give your eyes 30 minutes to adjust to the dark. Under ideal conditions, the shower produces roughly five meteors per hour. But the Draconids have a history of surprises: in 1933, observers in Europe saw 500 meteors per minute. In 2018, rates briefly topped 100 per hour, according to EarthSky.

Those outbursts happened because debris from the comet is concentrated near it, so activity often rises when the comet passes through the inner solar system, which last happened in March 2025. What the 2026 Draconids will do is impossible to know, but the conditions are near perfect: a 2-percent-lit waning crescent moon means a dark sky, letting even faint meteors shine.

• Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner
• Draco constellation
• Draconid meteor shower
• meteor shower viewing
• NASA
• October 2026