Everything to Know about the 2024 Taurids Double Meteor Shower

Sometimes the universe hits us with a one-two punch. The 2009 two-part miniseries Meteor (streaming now on Peacock) stars Christopher Lloyd, Jason Alexander, and Ernie Hudson as an astronomer, rocket scientist, and military general tasked with saving Earth from an incoming impactor. Humanity bands together to blast the asteroid with our collective nuclear arsenal, only to discover that there is a second larger fragment still on its way. Here in the real world, the Earth is getting an actual one-two punch of a couple of related meteor showers known as the Taurids.

Meteor showers take their name from the part of the sky they come from. Right now, there are two streams of meteors both radiating from the constellation Taurus, and they are collectively known as the Taurids. The South Taurids got a slightly earlier start, beginning September 10, and they’ll continue until November 20, 2024. The North Taurids, meanwhile, joined the fun October 20 and will continue until December 10. They are relatively tame showers, each offering about five meteors per hour and up to 10 per hour combined when the two showers overlap, like right now.

The Taurids are an unusual set of meteor showers

Most meteor showers are caused by the debris trail left by a comet or asteroid passing through Earth’s orbit. Massive space rocks shed bits of themselves like a trail of breadcrumbs through space, and the Earth passes through those trails every year while moving about its own orbit. Often, meteor showers can be tied to a specific object, but the Taurids are a little more complicated.

They appear to have been formed by 10 or more related space rocks including the comet 2P/Encke. One hypothesis is that Comet Encke was previously part of an even larger comet that broke apart 20,000 years ago. The ensuing debris created the collection of loosely related objects and the meteor showers we see today.

Image of the comet Lovejoy

The Taurids aren’t the most active meteor showers, but they make up for it by going big. While some meteor showers average 100 meteors or more per hour, the Taurids require considerably more patience. There aren’t very many of them every hour, but when they show up they are frequently spectacular. The Taurids are typically slow-moving, long-lasting, and bright, with a higher than normal number of fireballs.

Most of the shooting stars you see on a given night are made of objects the size of a grain of sand. They hit the air and rapidly burn up, painting a streak of light across the sky. When the Earth runs into a meteor that’s a little larger, about 3 feet according to NASA, they create the fireballs the Taurids are known for. As these larger objects push through the atmosphere they compress and heat the air in front of them. The heat from that process fractures and melts the meteor. Eventually, the pressure difference between the front and back of the meteor overwhelms its tensile strength and it explodes.

How to see the Taurids meteor showers

The North and South Taurids are both happening right now, offering the greatest number of combined hourly meteors. The South Taurids peak tonight, November 5, and the North Taurids follow suit a week later on November 12. The intervening week is your best opportunity to catch a few fireballs before the shower ends.

Visibility is best right now, when lunar illumination is low. You’ll have the best shot at catching the show after midnight, when the constellation Taurus is at its highest point. Visibility will become poorer with each passing night, as the Moon gets brighter and approaches Full. By the time the the North Taurids peak, the dimmer meteors might be washed out by moonlight, so get out and catch the show while you can!

Then watch the two-part miniseries Meteor, streaming now on Peacock!