Sky Calendar: Meteor Showers, Moons and More

The sky through the year

Each season has its own evening sky. Here’s a quick guide to what’s up after dark from Lethbridge, and which meteor showers fall in each season. The star patterns are explained on the Sky and Stars start page.

The major meteor showers

A meteor, or shooting star, is a speck of space dust, often smaller than a grain of sand, burning up as it hits our atmosphere at tremendous speed. Meteor showers happen when Earth passes through the trail of dust left behind by a comet (or, for the Geminids, a rocky asteroid). Earth crosses each trail at the same point in its orbit every year, so the showers come back on about the same dates.

The meteors in a shower all seem to fly out from one spot in the sky, called the radiant. Each shower is named after the constellation its radiant is in: the Perseids come from Perseus, the Geminids from Gemini, and so on.

The table uses the International Meteor Organization’s typical figures. Real rates change from year to year: the Orionids and Leonids, for example, have had much stronger years. Peak dates can also shift by a day either way, and the exact peak time matters for the short showers, so check the current year before you plan.

How to watch a meteor shower

1. Check the moon. A bright moon is the biggest spoiler. If the moon is near full on the peak night, try a night or two before the peak, or the dark hours after moonset. Our Dark Skies page has more on planning around the moon.
2. Get away from lights. Even a short drive out of the city makes a big difference. Stick to public places; see Dark spots close to home.
3. Lie back and look up. You don’t need binoculars or a telescope. They show too little sky. Use a reclining chair or a pad on the ground, and look at a wide, dark patch of sky about halfway up. Meteors can appear anywhere, not just at the radiant.
4. Give it time. Allow 30 minutes for your eyes to adjust, then at least an hour of watching. Meteors come in bunches and lulls.
5. Stay warm. You’ll be lying still for a long time. In December, a thick pad under you matters as much as a warm coat on top. See What to Wear.

Family activity: meteor count night

Real meteor scientists count meteors, and so can you. Counting turns a long wait into a game, and it teaches kids to look carefully and record what they see. The Perseids in August are the easiest to start with: warm nights, lots of meteors, and no school the next morning.

What you need

• Lawn chairs or sleeping pads, blankets and warm layers
• A dim red light, a pencil and a sheet of paper for each counter
• A watch or phone with the screen turned right down
• A thermos of something hot, and snacks

How to do it

1. Set up your chairs. Point each person at a different part of the sky so you cover more of it together.
2. Start the clock. Count in 15-minute rounds. Write the start time at the top of each round.
3. Make a mark for every meteor. Use a tally mark for each one. Draw a star beside any that are really bright, and a circle around any that leave a glowing trail.
4. Check where it came from. Trace each meteor’s path backward in your mind. Did it come from the radiant? If not, it’s a “sporadic”, a stray meteor that isn’t part of the shower. Count those separately.
5. Add it up. At the end, add up each round. Which 15 minutes had the most? Did the count go up as the night got later?

Full moon names

Many people know the full moons by names such as the Wolf Moon or the Harvest Moon. These are traditional names, and it’s worth knowing where they come from.

According to NASA, a farmers’ almanac published in Maine began printing these names for the full moons in the 1930s, presenting them as Native American names, and over time they became widely known and used. Different sources give different names for the same month, so on this site we simply call them traditional almanac names.

Here in southern Alberta, the Galt Museum & Archives notes that the Blackfoot people traditionally counted a month as one full moon, with month names tied to the seasons and nature, such as cold weather, the ducks and frogs, and the time when leaves fall. The museum’s Blackfoot Numbers page explains more.

Other names turn up too, such as the Frost Moon or Snow Moon in November, and different sources don’t always agree. When a month has two full moons, the second is often called a Blue Moon. It doesn’t look blue.

Spotting the Space Station

The International Space Station is one of the easiest sights in the sky once you know when to look. It’s a bright, steady light, like a fast-moving star or a plane without flashing lights, as the National Radio Astronomy Observatory describes it. It has no coloured lights, and it doesn’t blink. What you see is sunlight reflecting off its big solar panels.

That’s also why you only see it at certain times. The station must be in sunlight while your sky is dark, so passes come in the hours after sunset or before sunrise. A good pass crosses the sky in a few minutes, then often fades out partway as the station moves into Earth’s shadow.

Finding pass times

NASA’s free Spot the Station app tells you when the station will pass over your exact location and can send you an alert beforehand. It also has a built-in compass and an augmented reality view that shows where to look. It’s available for both of the major phone systems, from your phone’s app store.

Which planets are up?

Five planets can be seen without a telescope: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Which ones are visible, and when, changes from month to month and year to year, because they all circle the sun at different speeds. So rather than give dates here that would soon be out of date, here’s the general pattern and where to check each month.

• Venus is the brightest. It’s always near the sun in our sky, so it’s either an “evening star” low in the west after sunset or a “morning star” in the east before sunrise, for months at a time.
• Jupiter is usually the next brightest after Venus. For several months each year it’s up for much of the night.
• Saturn is fainter and pale yellow. A small telescope shows its rings.
• Mars has an orange-red colour. Its brightness changes a lot: about every two years it comes close to Earth and shines brightly for a few weeks.
• Mercury is the hardest. It never gets far from the sun, so it’s only seen low in twilight for a week or two at a time.

All five travel along the same path across the sky as the sun and moon. When the moon passes near a bright planet, the pair makes a lovely sight, and it’s an easy way to find the planet.

Where to check each month

• NASA’s “What’s Up”, a short monthly video and article of skywatching tips that has run since 2007, covers the planets, the moon and meteor showers for the month ahead: NASA What’s Up.
• RASC Calgary Centre offers a night sky planner and monthly sky charts on its website, from the nearest RASC centre to Lethbridge.

The Lethbridge sky year: daylight, darkness and clocks

Lethbridge sits at about 49.7° north. That latitude shapes the observing year as much as the weather does.

Long summer days, long winter nights

Times are Alberta Time, worked out for central Lethbridge with standard formulas. They agree with published sunrise tables to within a minute.

No true darkness in early summer

For the darkest skies, the sun has to sink 18° below the horizon. Here it never quite does from about June 3 to July 8. At the solstice it only gets about 17° down, so a faint glow stays in the north all night. Faint galaxies and the Milky Way look their best from late July on.

The new clock helps winter evenings

Alberta moved to permanent Alberta Time (UTC−6) on November 1, 2026, and the clocks no longer change. Winter evenings now stay light an hour later than they used to, and dark mornings last longer. The earliest sunset is about 5:30 p.m. in mid-December, and the latest sunrise about 9:28 a.m. at New Year’s. Printed charts and apps that still use Mountain Standard Time show winter events an hour earlier than our clocks.

Cold-season showers

The Geminids and Quadrantids fall in our coldest weeks. December’s average overnight low at the airport is −11.4 °C, and the record is −42.8 °C (Environment and Climate Change Canada normals, 1981–2010).

Look through a telescope in town

The Lethbridge Astronomy Society runs public observing nights at its observatory in the river valley. Tickets are free but required, events depend on the weather, and there are no public nights in summer. They start again each September. See our Dark Skies page for the details.

Sources

• International Meteor Organization, Meteor Shower Calendar (activity periods, peak nights and ZHR for each shower; parent comet of the Lyrids): imo.net
• International Meteor Organization, The 2026 meteor shower calendar is here: imo.net
• NASA Science, Full Moon Guide, November to December 2021 (the Maine almanac began publishing the names in the 1930s; Beaver, Frost and Snow Moon): science.nasa.gov
• NASA, Wolf Moon in Washington (the January name and its explanation): nasa.gov
• Galt Museum & Archives, Blackfoot Numbers (one month equals one full moon; Blackfoot month names tied to the seasons): galtmuseum.com
• NASA, Look Up: New NASA App Helps Stargazers Spot Space Station (app features and alerts): nasa.gov
• National Radio Astronomy Observatory, how the Space Station looks in the sky: public.nrao.edu
• NASA Science, What’s Up monthly skywatching series: science.nasa.gov
• NASA Night Sky Network, “Stargazing for Beginners” (30 minutes to dark-adapt): nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov
• Canadian Space Agency, What are the northern lights? (aurora more common around the equinoxes): asc-csa.gc.ca
• The parent comets of the Perseids (Swift-Tuttle) and Halley’s showers, the Geminids’ asteroid parent, why more meteors are seen after midnight, and the Eta Aquariid radiant’s late rising at our latitude are standard astronomy, not from a single source above.
• Government of Alberta, Alberta’s new time system (Alberta Time, UTC−6, from November 1, 2026): alberta.ca
• Lethbridge Astronomy Society, Public observing (free tickets, no summer events, restarts in September): lethbridgeastronomysociety.ca
• Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canadian Climate Normals 1981–2010, Lethbridge A (December minimum; record low): climate.weather.gc.ca
• Sunrise, sunset, day length and twilight figures are calculated for 49.69° N, 112.84° W with the solar formulas in Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (2nd ed.), chapter 25, as used in this site’s moon tool.