--- title: "Northern Taurid meteor shower peaks this week; a dark, nearly moonless sky gives fireball hunters a good shot" url: https://badiyaa.com/northern-taurids-meteor-shower-peak-fireballs/ published: 2026-11-12T04:09:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-12T04:09:00+00:00 section: Science publisher: Badiyaa --- # Northern Taurid meteor shower peaks this week; a dark, nearly moonless sky gives fireball hunters a good shot The Northern Taurid meteor shower peaks around November 12 with about five meteors an hour, NASA says, and a new Moon leaves the sky dark. The Northern Taurid meteor shower reaches its peak around November 12, and this year the timing is kind: the Moon was new on November 8 to 9, so only a thin crescent hangs in the evening sky and it sets well before the best viewing hours. NASA puts the rate at [around five meteors an hour under ideal conditions](https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/whats-up-november-2026-skywatching-tips-from-nasa/). That is a trickle, but the Taurids are famous for the odd fireball that lights up the ground. The Southern Taurids already peaked around November 5. We covered that branch, and its “Halloween fireballs” nickname, in our [late-October guide to the Taurid fireballs](https://badiyaa.com/taurid-halloween-fireballs-2026-where-when/). This week belongs to the northern branch. ## Where and when to look The weekly meteor outlook for November 7 to 13 places the Northern Taurid radiant in northwestern Taurus, about two degrees south of the Pleiades star cluster. The radiant is the point the meteors seem to fly out from. It climbs highest around 1 a.m. local time, so that is the hour to face south. Don’t stare straight at the Pleiades, though: observers are advised to keep the radiant near the edge of your view, because meteors streak outward from it and show up anywhere in the sky. - **When:** the nights around November 11 to 13, best from about midnight until the sky starts to brighten before dawn. - **Where:** somewhere dark, away from streetlights. From a city you will catch only the brightest meteors. - **How:** NASA suggests letting your eyes adjust for about half an hour and taking in as much sky as possible. No telescope needed; it only narrows the view. - **Rate:** roughly five an hour at a dark site, plus random “sporadic” meteors that belong to no shower. ## Why Taurids make fireballs Most meteor showers are clouds of dust. The [Taurid stream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurids) is coarser, made partly of pebble-sized chunks, and anything larger than a pebble can flare into a bolide as bright as the Moon, sometimes leaving a smoke trail behind it. Over Poland in 1995, sky cameras caught a Taurid bolide estimated at 900 kilograms, perhaps a meter across. The two branches come from different parents. The Southern Taurids trace back to Comet Encke. The Northern Taurids are linked to the asteroid 2004 TG10, which may itself be a broken-off fragment of Encke, since the two follow similar orbits. Both are thought to be debris from a much larger comet that fell apart roughly 10,000 years ago, and the combined stream is the largest in the inner solar system. Taurids are also slow. They hit the upper atmosphere at about 28 kilometers per second, while Leonids arrive at about 69 kilometers per second, so a Leonid is roughly two and a half times faster. Slow here is relative: at 28 kilometers per second, a Taurid would cover the 5,570 kilometers between New York and London in about 3 minutes and 20 seconds. That leisurely pace is why a bright Taurid can hang in view long enough for you to point and shout. ## Limits and what else is up Five an hour is a best case under truly dark skies, and clouds, haze or a nearby town will cut that sharply. The shower is long rather than sharp, active from about mid-October into early December, so a clear night later this week is almost as good as the peak itself. If you miss the Taurids, the sky keeps going. On the mornings of November 15 and 16, Mars and Jupiter sit about 1.2 degrees apart in the southeast before sunrise. Then the Leonids peak in the early hours of November 17 and 18, after moonset, with NASA estimating up to about 15 meteors an hour. The same week, Voyager 1 hits one light-day from Earth, a milestone we explained alongside its [Saturn flyby anniversary](https://badiyaa.com/voyager-1-saturn-flyby-one-light-day/). More sky guides live in our [Science section](https://badiyaa.com/category/science/). ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Taurids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurids) - [NASA: What’s Up November 2026](https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/whats-up-november-2026-skywatching-tips-from-nasa/) *Image: John Flannery from Richmond County, North Carolina, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*