Quadrantids from Wuzhong in 2026

Quadrantids from Wuzhong: the short answer

For Wuzhong, Ningxia, Quadrantids maximum lands at 05:12 on 4 January 2026. Culmination 09:20 at 78.4° — that is 98% of what the same stream would deliver with the radiant overhead — and the ceiling on the rate is 39.9 meteors an hour.

That ranks it 3rd of twelve from Wuzhong this year, behind the Geminids (149.2/h) and the Perseids (84.0/h).

The radiant track over this city

At 38.0°N a declination-+49.8° radiant traces an arc from 22:50 to 19:51, topping out at 78.4° at 09:20 bearing 360°. Inside the dark window it only manages 62.4°, and that lower figure is the one the rates are built from. The radiant currently lies in Bootes.

When it gets dark here

Wuzhong loses the Sun at 17:47 and gets it back at 08:11. True astronomical darkness — the only part that counts for faint meteors — runs 19:21 to 06:37, 11 h 16 min out of 14 h 24 min of night.

Local solar midnight, the true middle of the night, falls at 00:59 here rather than at 00:00: Asia/Shanghai runs 55 minutes ahead of mean solar time at 106.20°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 Wuzhong. The Moon is 100% lit and only 0 of 13 sampled hours are moon-free. Moonrise 17:27. Moonset 09:05. At the best hour it stands 32.1° above the horizon, 87° from the radiant, pulling the limiting magnitude down to 5.44.

Why 40 an hour and not 110

Converting ZHR 110 into something useful for Wuzhong means multiplying by sin(62.4°) and dividing by 2.1 raised to (6.5 − 5.44). That lands at 39.9 meteors an hour, from fast 40.4 km/s entries.

Hour by hour the modelled rate runs from 0.9 at 19:00 (radiant 3.2°) to 12.6 at 07:00 (radiant 62.4°), peaking at 39.9. That spread across 13 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 Wuzhong rather than the only one.

Watching from around Wuzhong

Wuzhong, Ningxia is the 39th largest of the 300 cities covered here, with a population of 7.20 million at 1133 m above sea level. The nearest other cities on the site are Yinchuan (54 km N), Qingyang (284 km SSE), Lanzhou (300 km SW) — 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.