The Ursids: When and How to Watch

Right around the winter solstice, while most people are occupied with everything else that time of year brings, a quiet little shower peaks near the celestial pole, from a radiant so close to due north that it simply never dips below the horizon for most of the northern hemisphere. The Ursids don't ask for a specific direction so much as a specific patch of sky that's always up there anyway.

When the Ursids run and peak

Our sky map lists the Ursids active December 17 through December 26, peaking the night of December 22 into the 23rd. The International Meteor Organization's 2026 calendar names the peak specifically as December 22 around 22h UT, which lines up closely with our page. The rates agree as well: both sources put the working-list ZHR at 10, a modest but consistent number for this shower.

The Moon is a real problem this particular year

IMO's 2026 forecast flags something specific and worth knowing before you plan around this shower: the Ursid peak falls only two days before a Full Moon, with roughly 96 percent of the Moon's disk illuminated and sitting in Taurus that night. Moonlight brightens the sky background, which functions for meteor-watching purposes like a shallower limiting magnitude, quietly erasing the fainter half of any shower's meteors even though the actual rate of meteoroids hitting the atmosphere hasn't changed. For a shower already running a modest ZHR of 10, a nearly full Moon is enough to meaningfully cut into what you'll actually see in 2026 specifically. IMO also separately notes the possibility of a weak dust-trail filament encounter the same day, with a ZHR potentially under 20, though this is speculative rather than a confirmed forecast.

Why the radiant never sets

The Ursid radiant sits near Ursa Minor, at a declination in the mid-70s, which places it well inside the circumpolar zone for almost anyone in the northern hemisphere. A star or radiant is circumpolar, meaning it never sets, when its declination exceeds 90 degrees minus your latitude; at a declination near 75 to 76 degrees, that holds true down to roughly 14 degrees north, covering nearly the entire northern hemisphere's populated latitudes. Practically, this means there is no wrong time of night to check on the Ursids based on whether the radiant has risen. It is always somewhere in your northern sky.

Where the debris comes from

The parent is comet 8P Tuttle, a short-period comet that returns roughly every 13 to 14 years. The Ursids sit on the calendar right at the solstice, which is part of why the shower gets relatively little attention compared to showers that peak on warmer or more convenient nights; it competes for attention with an entire season's worth of other obligations.

What a ZHR of 10 actually means for your evening

Zenithal hourly rate describes the count an ideal observer would see with the radiant directly overhead and a sky dark enough to reach magnitude 6.5. At a baseline of 10, and with 2026's near-full Moon working against you specifically, realistic expectations should be modest, likely a handful of meteors across a full hour of watching rather than a steady stream. This is a shower for patience and low expectations rather than a spectacle.

What this means for you tonight

Because the radiant never sets, you can check the Ursids at whatever hour is convenient for you on the night of December 22, without worrying about whether it has cleared the horizon yet. Given the Moon's interference in 2026, your best move is to position yourself somewhere the Moon itself is physically blocked, behind a building or a tree line, rather than fighting its glow directly, and to look generally away from Taurus, where the Moon will be sitting that night, toward the darkest patch you can find instead.

Ursa Minor, home to this radiant, is covered at the Ursa Minor constellation post. Read how light pollution and moonlight both change what you can see before you head out, and use the sky map to see exactly where the Moon and Ursa Minor sit from your own location that night.