Quadrantids from Kano in 2026

Quadrantids from Kano: the short answer

The Quadrantids reaches maximum at 22:12 local time on 3 January 2026 over Kano (12.0°N, 8.52°E, 484 m). The radiant culminates 52.5° high at 08:51 and the useful window runs 05:00–06:00, with an ideal-sky ceiling of 23.4 meteors an hour.

That ranks it 3rd of twelve from Kano this year, behind the Geminids (139.8/h) and the Perseids (66.9/h).

The radiant track over this city

At 12.0°N a declination-+49.8° radiant traces an arc from 01:53 to 15:49, topping out at 52.5° at 08:51 bearing 360°. Inside the dark window it only manages 38.6°, and that lower figure is the one the rates are built from. The radiant currently lies in Bootes.

When it gets dark here

The dark hours here run 19:29 to 05:32 — 10 h 3 min of astronomical night, bracketed by sunset at 18:13 and sunrise at 06:47. Civil twilight ends at 18:36; anything earlier than that is wasted effort.

Local solar midnight, the true middle of the night, falls at 00:30 here rather than at 00:00: Africa/Lagos runs 26 minutes ahead of mean solar time at 8.52°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 Kano. The Moon is 100% lit and only 0 of 12 sampled hours are moon-free. Moonrise 18:28. Moonset 07:45. At the best hour it stands 35.2° above the horizon, 85° from the radiant, pulling the limiting magnitude down to 5.36.

Why 23 an hour and not 110

The published ZHR of 110 assumes the radiant overhead and a sky at limiting magnitude 6.5. Here the radiant reaches 38.6° inside the dark window and the limiting magnitude at the best hour is 5.36, which with r = 2.1 gives 23.4 an hour. Entry speed is 40.4 km/s.

Hour by hour the modelled rate runs from 0.0 at 19:00 (radiant -23.6°) to 4.0 at 06:00 (radiant 38.6°), peaking at 23.4. 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 3 January 2026 is the best night from Kano rather than the only one.

Watching from around Kano

Kano is the 58th largest of the 300 cities covered here, with a population of 4.91 million at 484 m above sea level. The nearest other cities on the site are Kaduna (202 km SW), Abuja (346 km SSW), Onitsha (678 km SSW) — 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.