Those who missed last week’s Southern Taurid meteor shower have another chance to see a fireball burn in the sky, as the Northern Taurids peak. With dark skies expected after Monday’s new moon, the best time to view the meteor shower will be from Wednesday night to early Thursday morning. Meteors will appear as a few seconds of flashing light. “Observing conditions should be very good,” said Mark Boslough, a research professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences at the University of New Mexico. “There’s no moonlight to really interfere with being able to see them.” Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through debris trails from asteroids or comets orbiting the sun. When chunks of ice and rock hit Earth’s atmosphere, they burn up and leave a streak of light in the sky. Taurid meteor showers are known to produce fireballs that can be brighter than Venus, one of Earth’s closest neighbor planets. These fireballs emerge from larger debris ranging in size from a marble to a small rock. They can leave behind bright lines of ionized air molecules that disappear after a few seconds, while others produce cloud-like vapor trails of smoke that remain in the air for minutes. To watch the meteor shower, find a dark place and let your eyes adjust for about half an hour, without looking at any bright screens. With NASA projecting a crescent moon at 4% capacity, Wednesday night will offer optimal viewing, although peak activity doesn’t occur until 1 p.m. ET on Thursday. The bright stripes will appear to emerge from the Taurus constellation. “One of the interesting things about the Taurid meteor shower is that it produces these larger objects,” Boslough said. “You don’t necessarily have to look at the constellation: they radiate from the constellation, but you can see them anywhere in the sky.” The Northern Taurids, which are active from October 20 to December 10, typically create five meteors per hour. When they overlap with the Southern Taurids, which end on November 12, that number doubles. Boslough’s research team observes meteor showers to measure the risk that objects could hit Earth. In 2025, they published a paper specifically on the Taurid Current, which researchers say may carry more potentially dangerous objects. “Planetary defense experts are interested in Taurid meteors,” Boslough said. “Observations of this meteor shower will tell us if there is anything there that could put us at risk.” The Northern Taurid meteor shower occurs annually when Earth passes through debris left by an asteroid known as 2004 TG10, discovered in 2004. Scientists believe the asteroid was initially part of a much larger object that broke up about 20,000 years ago and created the Encke Complex. Another of the resulting smaller objects is Comet Encke, the comet associated with the Southern Taurids. In a more recent study, scientists theorized that 2004 TG10 is just one of 10 asteroids responsible for the Northern Taurids, according to EarthSky. “It’s not just a meteor shower,” Boslough said, comparing the Taurids to the Perseid meteor shower in August. “With the Taurids, the complex has many different components.” Boslough, among other scientists, is preparing for a particularly dense Taurid meteor shower in 2032. Knowing roughly where a cluster of dangerous debris will occur, his team will use a telescope to detect the small, dark objects through the heat they emit. He emphasized that while researchers are investigating the potential for dangerous projectiles, this monitoring is due to “due diligence” rather than an imminent concern about one hitting the planet. “The idea that there is a dense swarm of dangerous objects is completely hypothetical; there is very little evidence for it,” Boslough said. “But we can’t eliminate the possibility that the risk during those times is extremely high.” As the year comes to a close, there are still a few more meteor showers to keep an eye on. If you’re looking for another chance to stare at the sky, here are some peak dates to keep in mind. · Leonids: November 16-17 · Geminids: December 13-14 · Ursids: December 21-22
