The Most Unpredictable Meteor Shower of the Year Peaks Tonight

The June Bootid meteor shower is one of the quieter entries on the annual sky calendar — most years. On its peak night of June 27, you might see only a handful of slow, leisurely meteors drifting across the constellation Boötes. But the June Bootids have a history of stunning outbursts that have transformed a modest summer shower into a spectacle of more than a hundred meteors an hour. That unpredictability is exactly what makes Friday night worth watching.

The Comet Behind the Show: Where June Bootid Meteors Actually Come From

The shower is produced by debris shed from Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke, a short-period comet that circles the Sun once every 6.3 years. As the comet travels along its orbit, it leaves behind a trail of dust and small rocky particles. Every year between June 22 and July 2, Earth passes through that trail. The particles collide with our atmosphere and burn up as streaks of light, radiating outward from a point in the constellation Boötes, the Herdsman, high in the northern summer sky.

The American Meteor Society tracks the June Bootids as an active shower during this window, with the June 27 peak offering the best opportunity to catch meteors in a single night.