eta-Aquariids from Rio de Janeiro in 2026

eta-Aquariids from Rio de Janeiro: the short answer

For Rio de Janeiro, eta-Aquariids maximum lands at 06:01 on 6 May 2026. Culmination 07:31 at 67.4° — that is 92% of what the same stream would deliver with the radiant overhead — and the ceiling on the rate is 7.9 meteors an hour.

That ranks it 5th of twelve from Rio de Janeiro this year, behind the Geminids (85.6/h) and the Perseids (15.0/h).

The radiant track over this city

Aquarius carries the radiant. From Rio de Janeiro it clears the horizon at 01:31 on a bearing of 90° (E), reaches 67.4° at 07:31 in the north, and drops back below the horizon at 13:33. Within the observing window it peaks at 46.8°.

When it gets dark here

Rio de Janeiro loses the Sun at 17:24 and gets it back at 06:14. True astronomical darkness — the only part that counts for faint meteors — runs 18:41 to 04:57, 10 h 16 min out of 12 h 50 min of night.

Local solar midnight, the true middle of the night, falls at 23:49 here rather than at 00:00: America/Sao_Paulo runs 7 minutes behind mean solar time at 43.18°W. That offset is why the best hour on this page is not the hour you would guess from the clock.

What the Moon does here

Moonlight is the limiting factor on this night from Rio de Janeiro. The Moon is 83% lit and only 3 of 12 sampled hours are moon-free. Moonrise 20:15. Moonset 10:25. At the best hour it stands 67.6° above the horizon, 65° from the radiant, pulling the limiting magnitude down to 4.75.

Why 8 an hour and not 50

Converting ZHR 50 into something useful for Rio de Janeiro means multiplying by sin(46.8°) and dividing by 2.4 raised to (6.5 − 4.75). That lands at 7.9 meteors an hour, from very fast 66.3 km/s entries.

Hour by hour the modelled rate runs from 0.0 at 18:00 (radiant -57.6°) to 7.9 at 05:00 (radiant 46.8°), peaking at 7.9. That spread across 12 hours is why a "what time" answer beats a "how many" answer.

The stream comes from Comet 1P/Halley and is listed as active 19 April to 27 May, so 6 May 2026 is the best night from Rio de Janeiro rather than the only one.

Watching from around Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro is the 44th largest of the 300 cities covered here, with a population of 6.75 million at 12 m above sea level. The nearest other cities on the site are Belo Horizonte (341 km NNW), São Paulo (360 km WSW), Curitiba (678 km WSW) — close enough that the radiant altitudes barely change, far enough that sunset and moonrise do.

What this page does not know

Light-pollution data for this location is not connected yet. Rates on this page are computed against the reference rural sky the zenithal hourly rate is defined for (naked-eye limiting magnitude 6.5); they are not a claim about how bright the sky is where you are standing. Once the light-pollution layer is connected these figures will be recomputed for the local sky and will generally fall.

Cloud cover is a forecast, not a constant, so it is resolved when you load the tonight card and is deliberately absent from this prerendered page — the hourly table shows "unavailable" rather than assuming clear skies. Meteor outbursts, local terrain and building horizons are not modelled.

A single observer with an unobstructed horizon typically records 30–50% below the ideal-sky figure. Give your eyes twenty minutes to adapt, keep bright screens away, look about halfway up the sky rather than straight at the radiant, and count for a full hour before judging a shower.