Meteor shower
Leonids
Fair from New Zealand
Usually modest, occasionally historic. The 1833 and 1966 Leonid storms produced thousands of meteors an hour.
Computed from standard astronomical algorithms · Shower parameters: IMO working list of visual meteor showers · Reviewed Oct 2026 · Method
From New Zealand
Visible from New Zealand in the hours before dawn, though the radiant stays moderately low. Ordinary in most years — the storms it is famous for come roughly every 33 years, when the parent comet returns and Earth crosses a fresh dense filament.
How much the Moon will spoil it
A bright Moon washes out everything but the brightest meteors, and it is the difference between a good night and a wasted one more often than cloud is. Computed for the peak:
| Year | Moon at peak | Phase | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 50% lit | First quarter | Some moonlight |
| 2027 | 87% lit | Waning gibbous | Badly moonlit |
How to watch
Get away from town lights, give your eyes 20 minutes to adapt, and do not look at your phone. Lie back and take in as much sky as you can rather than staring at the radiant — meteors near the radiant are foreshortened and look shorter than they are.
The quoted 15 per hour is a zenithal hourly rate: what a single observer would count under a perfect dark sky with the radiant directly overhead. Nobody ever sees that. A realistic dark-sky count from New Zealand is a fraction of it, and from a suburb, a fraction of that. Dark sky notes apply here too.