Quadrantids from Bangkok in 2026

Not worth a late night

Quadrantids: not worth a late night here

Even against the sky actually measured here, the Quadrantids would only manage about 4 meteors an hour from Bangkok: the radiant tops out at 41° and the Moon is 100% lit. That is a low return for a night outdoors.

Maximum (local)
04:12 · 4 January 2026
Night of
3 January 2026
Best window
05:00–06:00
Peak rate
4.3/h
Radiant (best)
41.1° NE
Moon
100% lit
Cloud cover
unavailable

Next worthwhile night here: Geminids on 14 December 2026 — 13.0 meteors an hour, 345 days after this one.

Local to Bangkok

Sunset
18:02
Astronomical dusk
19:18
Astronomical dawn
05:26
Sunrise
06:42
Dark hours
10 h 8 min
Radiant culminates
08:43 · 54.1°
Solar midnight
00:22
Latitude
13.8°N

Rates are computed for Bangkok's own measured sky brightness, 17.4 mag/arcsec² — equivalent to Bortle 9 skies. Derived from satellite night-lights data; the method is published.

Quadrantids from Bangkok: the short answer

Marginal from Bangkok. Maximum 04:12 on 4 January 2026; the radiant reaches 54.1° at 08:43 and the rate for this city's measured sky tops out at 4.3 an hour with the Moon 100% lit.

That ranks it 3rd of twelve from Bangkok this year, behind the Geminids (13.0/h) and the Perseids (9.0/h).

The radiant track over this city

The radiant rises at 01:36 bearing NE, culminates 54.1° up at 08:43 towards north (360°), and sets at 15:51. It lies inside Bootes. The rate scales with the sine of that altitude, so 54.1° buys you 81% of a zenith radiant.

When it gets dark here

Bangkok loses the Sun at 18:02 and gets it back at 06:42. True astronomical darkness — the only part that counts for faint meteors — runs 19:18 to 05:26, 10 h 8 min out of 12 h 40 min of night.

Local solar midnight, the true middle of the night, falls at 00:22 here rather than at 00:00: Asia/Bangkok runs 18 minutes ahead of mean solar time at 100.50°E. 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 Bangkok. The Moon is 100% lit and only 0 of 12 sampled hours are moon-free. Moonrise 17:58. Moonset 07:26. At the best hour it stands 30.7° above the horizon, 87° from the radiant, pulling the limiting magnitude down to 2.98.

Why 4 an hour and not 110

Converting ZHR 110 into something useful for Bangkok means multiplying by sin(41.1°) and dividing by 2.1 raised to (6.5 − 2.98). That lands at 4.3 meteors an hour, from fast 40.4 km/s entries.

Hour by hour the modelled rate runs from 0.0 at 19:00 (radiant -22.5°) to 1.5 at 06:00 (radiant 41.1°), peaking at 4.3. That spread across 12 hours is why a "what time" answer beats a "how many" answer.

The stream comes from Minor planet 2003 EH1 and Comet C/1490 Y1 and is listed as active 28 December to 12 January, so 4 January 2026 is the best night from Bangkok rather than the only one.

Watching from around Bangkok

Bangkok is the 55th largest of the 300 cities covered here, with a population of 5.10 million at 12 m above sea level. The nearest other cities on the site are Phnom Penh (537 km ESE), Yangon (576 km NW), Cần Thơ (708 km SE) — close enough that the radiant altitudes barely change, far enough that sunset and moonrise do.

What this page does not know

Rates on this page are computed against this city's own measured sky brightness, derived from satellite night-lights data. That is a calculated brightness for the point directly overhead, not a survey of your street: a park on the edge of town and a lit car park in the centre share the same figure here and will not look the same. It is also zenith-only, while the Bortle scale describes the whole sky from horizon to horizon.

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.

Expected rate through the night

0 3 5 19:00 21:00 23:00 01:00 03:00 05:00

Meteors per hour for one observer under this city's measured sky. Local time, Asia/Bangkok. Cloud cover is not included — it is unknown at build time.

Hour by hour from Bangkok

Hourly radiant altitude, Moon position, limiting magnitude and expected rate for Quadrantids from Bangkok.
Local Radiant Moon alt Moon lit Sun alt Cloud Lim. mag Meteors/h
19:00 -22.5° 11.9° 100% -13.8° n/a 2.32 0.0
20:00 -25.7° 24.7° 100% -27.5° n/a 3.17 0.0
21:00 -26.3° 37.6° 100% -41.3° n/a 2.78 0.0
22:00 -24.3° 50.5° 100% -55.1° n/a 2.46 0.0
23:00 -19.7° 63.0° 100% -68.5° n/a 2.22 0.0
00:00 -13.2° 73.7° 100% -79.5° n/a 2.08 0.0
01:00 -5.3° 76.8° 100% -77.4° n/a 2.06 0.0
02:00 3.6° 68.6° 100% -65.2° n/a 2.14 0.3
03:00 13.1° 56.6° 100% -51.7° n/a 2.34 1.1
04:00 22.8° 43.7° 100% -37.9° n/a 2.62 2.4
05:00 32.3° 30.7° 100% -24.1° n/a 2.98 4.3
06:00 41.1° 17.7° 100% -10.4° n/a 1.25 1.5

"Cloud: n/a" means the forecast is not resolved on this prerendered page, not that the sky is clear.