The new astronomical year begins, as it does every year, with a shower of passing stars, the Quadrantids, which this year will peak tonight in Greece and the rest of the northern hemisphere.

However, this year’s quaternions may be overshadowed by the fact that a few days later, on the evening of Friday, January 6, there will be a full moon – the first in 2023 – which will make the sky quite bright. Therefore, only the brightest meteors can be observed.

The next major downpour will be the Lyrids, which peak on April 22 and 23.

What are quaternions?

The quaternions, which typically last from January 1 to January 5, peaking in between, are best seen at more northerly latitudes.

At their peak, up to 40 meteors per hour enter the Earth’s atmosphere at over 40 kilometers per second, with up to 120 meteors reported in some years.

This is a better-than-average meteor shower, though less well-known than others such as the Leonids, Orionids, and Didymids, as its meteors are fainter but often light up the sky with unusually large “tails.”

This particular stream of “shooting stars” is named after a faint constellation (Quadrans Muralis – it was an ancient astronomical instrument before the invention of the telescope) discovered by French astronomer Jérôme Lalande in 1795 but no longer exists.

Today, the constellation Bootes is considered to be the source of meteors, in which Epitychia Tetra was included in 1922, when the International Astronomical Union identified 88 constellations that exist today.

Where are they from

Astronomers are not yet sure what kind of comet it was, leaving behind a trail of dust and particles that turn into meteors every time the Earth crosses their orbit.

This is probably the asteroid 2003 EH1 with a diameter of about three kilometers, which is the remnant of the former comet C/1490 Y1.

The asteroid in question was officially discovered in 2003, but the parent comet was first observed by Chinese, Japanese and Korean astronomers as early as the 15th century.

The first observations of passing quaternions in Europe were made by the Brussels Observatory in 1825.

Source: RES-IPE