Meteor Showers 2026-27 in India: Peak Nights and the Moon

The strongest meteor shower left in 2026 is the Geminids, and its peak night in India is 14-15 December. The Moon that night will be a 25% waxing crescent that sets in the evening, so at Delhi 7.5 of the 10.5 dark hours with the Geminid radiant above the horizon will be free of moonlight. A year later the same shower peaks under a 98% Moon, and not one dark hour with the radiant up is moon-free at either city on this page. Of everything about a shower that can be worked out in advance, the Moon on the peak night matters most, and it is what this page works out for every major shower from 5 November 2026 to the end of 2027.

Where the Dates and Numbers Come From

The showers, their activity windows, their dates of maximum and their strengths are the International Meteor Organization’s, taken from the working list in its Meteor Shower Calendar for 2026 (for the November and December 2026 showers) and for 2027. That list gives each shower’s maximum as a position of the Sun, a solar longitude, because a shower happens when the Earth crosses the same stream of debris at the same point of its orbit each year. This page finds the moment the Sun reaches that longitude in the JPL DE421 ephemeris, converts it to Indian Standard Time and keeps only the date; in every case the moment falls on the calendar’s own date of maximum, which it gives in Universal Time. Nothing here forecasts how many meteors anyone will see.

The strength column is the IMO’s zenithal hourly rate, or ZHR. The calendar defines it as the number an ideal observer would see in a perfectly clear sky, with stars down to magnitude +6.5 visible and the radiant, the point the meteors appear to stream from, overhead. Those conditions are rarely met anywhere, and a low radiant, a bright Moon or town lights all cut the number seen, so the ZHR is a way to compare showers, not a promise for a night. A “+” after it is the calendar’s own mark.

Every Major Shower to December 2027

The peak night runs from the evening of the first date to the dawn of the second, in IST, and is the night whose middle lies closest to the computed maximum. The two city columns count, inside that night’s full darkness (from the end of evening twilight to the start of morning twilight, the Sun 18° below the horizon), the hours with the radiant above the horizon, then how many of those hours also have the Moon below it. They are sampled every 5 minutes and rounded to the half hour. Shaded rows are the showers with a ZHR of 80 or more.

* The Eta Aquariids’ table position gives the night of 6-7 May; the calendar’s text puts the maximum about 6 hours earlier, which lies between that night and the one before. See below.

Five of the 16 peak nights have no moon-free hour with the radiant up at Delhi: the Ursids of 2026, the April Lyrids of 2027, the Northern Taurids of 2027, the Leonids of 2027 and the Geminids of 2027. On eight of the 16 peak nights the computed maximum falls outside Delhi’s dark hours, in daylight or twilight; a shower’s activity rises and falls over hours or days rather than switching on, so the night next to it is still the one to look at, and the table names that night.

November and December 2026

The Taurids. The Southern and Northern Taurids are long, weak showers, active for 62 and 52 days, with ZHRs of 7 and 5. Their meteors are slow, entering the air at about 27-29 km/s by the calendar’s figures. Their peak nights are 5-6 November and 12-13 November, both under a thin Moon, 12% and 11%, and their radiants are above the horizon for almost the whole dark night at both cities.

The Leonids. The peak night is 17-18 November. The Leonid radiant rises late, so of the 10.5 dark hours at Delhi it is up for only 5.5, the ones leading to dawn, when it stands 53° high at 04:00 IST. The Moon will be 55% lit and waxing, and it will have set before the radiant clears the horizon, so every one of those 5.5 hours is moon-free. With a ZHR of 15 in the calendar it is a modest shower, and its meteors are the fastest on the list, about 71 km/s.

The Geminids. The calendar gives the Geminids a ZHR of 150, the highest on its list, and a fairly slow 35 km/s. Their radiant, in Gemini, is above the horizon for 10.5 of the 11 dark hours at Delhi and more than 30° up for 8 of them, which is why the Geminids, unlike the Leonids, can be watched from late evening. On 14-15 December 2026 the moon-free share is 7.5 hours at Delhi and 7 at Chennai.

The Ursids. Their radiant lies near the pole star, at a declination of +76°, so from Delhi it never sets; at Chennai it is above the horizon for 7 of the dark hours and stands 18° high at 04:00 IST, against 32° at Delhi. In 2026 the peak night, 22-23 December, comes with a 98% Moon, and none of the radiant’s dark hours is moon-free.

2027, Shower by Shower

Quadrantids, 3-4 January. The year opens with one of the three strong showers, a ZHR of 80+, and a 12% waning Moon. The catch for India is timing: the computed maximum falls on the morning of 4 January, after dawn, and the calendar itself puts an uncertainty of about two and a half hours on it. The radiant, at +49°, is up for 5.5 dark hours at Delhi but only 3.5 at Chennai, and at 04:00 IST it stands 33° high at Delhi against 24° at Chennai.

Lyrids, 22-23 April. A ZHR of 18 under a 95% Moon: no moon-free radiant hour at either city.

Eta Aquariids, early May. The Moon is new, 0% lit, which is the best possible phase. The difficulty is the radiant, which sits almost on the celestial equator; the calendar notes that it culminates near 8 a.m. local time, so its meteors come only in the last hours before dawn: at Delhi it is up for 2 dark hours on the night of 6-7 May and at Chennai 2.5, never reaching 30° at Delhi within the dark. The two dates of maximum in the calendar do not agree. The working-list solar longitude, solved here, gives the evening of 6 May IST; the calendar’s text gives 09h UT on the same day, the afternoon in India, which lies between the nights of 5-6 May and 6-7 May. The page does not choose between them. The calendar adds that, in its analyses of visual data since 1984, ZHRs have generally stayed above 30 from 3 to 10 May, so the shower does not depend on one night.

Southern Delta Aquariids, 31 July - 1 August. A ZHR of 25, a 4% Moon, and a radiant south of the equator at -16°, which favours the south: it is up for 8 dark hours at Chennai against 7 at Delhi. The peak falls in the monsoon, and cloud is the one thing no ephemeris can account for.

Perseids, 13-14 August. The second strong shower of 2027, ZHR 110+, but the computed maximum falls in the Indian afternoon of 13 August and the Moon is 87% lit and waxing. Of the 8 dark hours with the radiant up at Delhi, 1.5 are moon-free, at the end of the night after moonset.

Orionids, 21-22 October. ZHR 20, a 58% waning Moon that is up through the hours the radiant is: 0.5 moon-free hours at Delhi.

Leonids, 17-18 November. The 2027 Moon is 80% lit and waning, high in the sky before dawn when the radiant is up, so no radiant hour is moon-free. The calendar’s text for 2027 also lists several possible encounters with older debris trails between 17 November and 20 November UT, each with its own uncertain strength; they are the calendar’s modelling, reported here and not checked.

Geminids and Ursids, December. The 2027 Geminids peak on 14-15 December with a 98% Moon, a poor year, and the Ursids on 22-23 December with a 21% waning Moon, giving 8 moon-free hours at Delhi.

Why Delhi and Chennai Differ

A radiant can climb no higher than 90° minus the gap between the observer’s latitude and the radiant’s declination. Delhi is at about 28.6° north and Chennai at about 13.1°, so a radiant far north of the equator stands higher from Delhi and a southern one higher from Chennai. The table shows it both ways: the Quadrantid, Perseid and Ursid radiants are up longer from Delhi, while the Southern Delta Aquariid and Eta Aquariid radiants are up longer from Chennai. The darkness itself differs too, since nights at Chennai are shorter than at Delhi in December and longer in summer. Other cities fall in between according to their latitude, but the minutes in the table belong to these two places only.

Using the Moon Column

Whether the Moon is waxing or waning says when in the night it is up. A waxing Moon stands in the evening sky and sets before the Sun rises again, earlier the thinner it is; a waning Moon rises during the night and is up until morning. Many radiants climb highest in the hours before dawn, so a waxing Moon is often the kinder one, as the 2026 Leonids and the 2026 Geminids show, and a waning gibbous Moon the worst. The lunar phase for any date can be read off the site’s moon phase calendar for 2027, and full-moon dates and their folk names are on the full moon names page. The daily panchang gives the tithi, the Indian measure of the same phase.

What This Page Does Not Give

There is no count of meteors to expect, no clock time for a peak and no verdict on whether a shower will be seen from a given town; cloud, haze, town lights and the observer’s eyes decide those. There is also no meaning. A falling star is an old omen in many traditions, but this site does not read a meteor, a shower or its date as a sign about anyone, and no ritual is attached to any night here. Other sky events computed the same way are the planet parade dates and the supermoon dates and distances.

In Brief

• Next: Southern Taurids, 5-6 November 2026; Leonids, 17-18 November
• Best Moon among the strong showers: Geminids 2026, 14-15 December, 25% waxing, 7.5 moon-free radiant hours at Delhi
• Strong showers in 2027: Quadrantids (12% Moon), Perseids (87% Moon) and Geminids (98% Moon)
• Dates: IMO calendars 2026 and 2027; the maximum solved in DE421 and printed as an IST date only
• Not given: meteor counts, peak times, visibility, meanings

In Hindi: उल्का वर्षा 2026-27: भारत में चरम रातें और चन्द्रमा.