Two More Meteor Showers Are Coming: Here's How to See Them

At this point, stargazers might as well just look up at the night sky every night. We’ve already had a planet parade, a triple meteor shower, and a few appearances of aurora borealis. With Perseids and another planet parade coming soon, August is shaping up to be a great month for fans of the night sky. You can add two more meteor showers to your calendar to round out an already active August.

The first shower will come courtesy of Kappa Cygnids, a meteor shower that started on Aug. 3 and runs through Aug. 25. It should reach its zenith on Aug. 17, just a few days after Perseids finishes its light show. What makes Kappa Cygnids interesting is that it doesn’t happen every year, and humans aren’t quite sure where it came from.

Typically, a meteor shower is associated with a comet that leaves dust and debris in its wake. For example, the Perseids meteor shower is produced by the comet Swift-Tuttle, and the Earth moves through the trail left by the comet. However, humans have yet to discover which comet left Kappa Cygnids behind for us, although some scholars believe that it may be a minor planet called 2008 ED69.

The second meteor shower to grace the August evening skies is Alpha Aurigids. It’s a much shorter meteor shower that begins on Aug. 25 and runs through Sept. 10. It should peak late on Aug. 31 and into Sept. 1. This one comes courtesy of the C/1911 N1 Kiess comet, which takes 2,000 years to orbit the sun. Alpha Aurigids is known for producing spectacular meteor showers about once or twice a century. This year isn’t one of those years but it’ll still produce a decent number of meteors.

When and where are these meteor showers visible?

Kappa Cygnids will peak around the evening of Aug. 17 and should be visible all night. The radiant—the point from which the meteors appear to originate—will be tucked between the Cygnus, Draco, and Lyra constellations near the star Kappa Cygnus. Meteor showers are often named after the location of their radiants, so Kappa Cygnids is named after the Kappa Cygnus star.

For Alpha Aurigids, the peak will happen late Aug. 31 and into Sept. 1. The radiant for this one is smack dab in the middle of the Auriga constellation near the Alpha Aurigae star. Just like Kappa Cygnids, Alpha Aurigids is named after the star closest to its radiant. For most of the northern hemisphere, the Auriga constellation doesn’t come over the horizon until after 1 a.m. local time, so you’ll need to stay up late or get up before sunrise if you want to see them.

For reference, in Columbus, Ohio, the Draco, Lyra, and Cygnus constellations are fairly high up in the sky when looking northwest on Aug. 17. Meanwhile, the Auriga constellation appears on the northeast horizon at around 1 a.m. local time. It is below the horizon before then. We checked New York, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, and the locations were about the same in all three places.

If you’d like to find the exact locations yourself, Time and Date has a nice tool where you can scan the skies around your general area. Simply go to the site, input your location, change the date in the tool to the aforementioned days, and then fast-forward the timer until it’s well after midnight. Then click and drag until you find the above constellations. The Sky Tonight app (Google Play, iOS) has a similar tool for mobile users.

For the most part, both meteor showers should be visible all over the northern hemisphere and a sizable amount of the southern hemisphere.

auriga-constellation — The Alpha Aurigids should radiate from smack dab in the middle of the Auriga constellation.

Time and Date

How many meteors can I expect to see?

Both of these meteor showers are relatively small compared to heavy hitters like Perseids. However, there should still be pretty good activity. Kappa Cygnids should produce around three meteors per hour during its peak while the Alpha Aurigids are expected to drop around five meteors per hour.

That doesn’t seem like a lot, but most meteor showers that are worth naming perform about as well. The larger showers, including Perseids, Geminids, Eta Aquarids and Quadrantids can produce anywhere from 50 to 120 meteors per hour during their respective peaks. Most of the rest of the named meteor showers produce 20 or fewer, which means Kappa Cygnids and Alpha Aurigids are fairly average in terms of meteor shower output.

With that said, the above numbers are mostly educated guesses based on available data. The meteor showers could be more active or less active depending on a variety of factors. We won’t know for sure until the date comes.

How do I view the meteor showers?

You shouldn’t need any special equipment to view meteors during a meteor shower. They will appear in the sky as shooting stars. Binoculars can help but we would suggest avoiding telescopes, as that’ll obfuscate large portions of the sky, which can cause you to miss a meteor.

However, the standard space-viewing rules apply here. You’ll want to check the weather to make sure clouds don’t ruin your good time. Additionally, you’ll want to get as far away from major cities as you can. Light pollution from cities can make it impossible to see most of the meteors.

To give you an idea of how impactful it can be, the Quadrantids meteor shower can produce up to 120 meteors per hour. In a big city, you might see as few as five and in the suburbs, you might be able to see as many as 10 per hour. Thus, for smaller meteor showers like Kappa Cygnids and Alpha Aurigids, the further you get away from the city, the better your odds of seeing more meteors.

What makes these meteor showers unique?

Since Kappa Cygnids happens around the same time as Perseids, it was actually observed by astronomers a couple of times before it was found to be its own meteor shower in the late 1800s, with prior observations being written off as just being a part of the Perseids meteor shower.

Kappa Cygnids is also inconsistent. Some years, astronomers note that the shower produces bright, plentiful meteors and in other years, it produces nothing at all. It wasn’t until 2014 that it was discovered that Kappa Cygnids doesn’t act like other meteor showers, In general, meteor showers are trails left behind by orbiting comets, and the trails themselves are affected by that orbit. However, Kappa Cygnids appears to also be affected by Jupiter’s gravity, which throws things out of whack.

Alpha Aurigids is also an inconsistent meteor shower. Most years, it produces its usual five meteors per hour. However, once or twice in a century, Alpha Aurigids goes off the deep end and produces one of the most intense meteor showers on record. In 2007, the Alpha Aurigids produced an estimated 400 meteors per hour during its peak. The last time it produced that number of meteors was 1935 and the next such instance is expected to be around 2077. So, while this year’s display is expected to be quite average, Alpha Aurigids can produce meteors with the best of them about once in a lifetime.

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