Meteor showers from Fuzhou in 2026

Best night of the year · Worth planning for

Geminids — 14 December 2026

Plan for 22:00–06:00 local time: the radiant reaches 84° above the horizon, the Moon is 26% lit, and astronomical darkness lasts 10 h 45 min. Under the reference dark sky that rates about 149 meteors an hour — cloud cover is a runtime fact this page cannot know, so treat it as the ceiling, not a promise.

Maximum (local)
21:41 · 14 December 2026
Night of
14 December 2026
Best window
22:00–06:00
Peak rate
149.1/h
Radiant (best)
83.7° NNE
Moon
26% lit
Cloud cover
unavailable

Local to Fuzhou

Coordinates
26.1°N 119.31°E
Elevation
14 m
Time zone
Asia/Shanghai
Sunset
17:13
Astronomical dusk
18:35
Astronomical dawn
05:19
Sunrise
06:42
Dark hours
10 h 45 min
Solar midnight
23:57
Worth a night
6 of 12

Light-pollution data for this location is not connected yet. No Bortle class is claimed for Fuzhou: every rate on this page uses the reference rural sky (limiting magnitude 6.5) that the zenithal hourly rate is defined against.

Times are for the Geminids peak night, 14 December 2026, in Asia/Shanghai.

Meteor showers over Fuzhou in 2026

Fuzhou, Fujian sits at 26.1°N, 119.31°E, 14 m above sea level, and keeps Asia/Shanghai time. Of the twelve established showers on the annual calendar, 12 lift their radiant above this horizon during darkness on the night of maximum and 6 clear ten meteors an hour on the reference sky. The Geminids leads, at 149.1 an hour.

Clock time here runs 3 minutes ahead of mean solar time, so local solar midnight on the Geminids peak night falls at 23:57 rather than 00:00. Fuzhou, Fujian is the 86th largest of the 300 cities on this site, with a population of 3.74 million.

The three best nights of 2026 here

The Geminids peaks at 21:41 on 14 December 2026 Fuzhou time. Its radiant culminates 83.8° up at 02:06 bearing N, the Moon is 26% lit, and 22:00–06:00 is the window — about 149.1 meteors an hour on the reference sky.

Behind it, the Perseids manages 79.6 an hour on 13 August (radiant 56.9° at best, Moon 0% lit) and the Quadrantids 35.8 on 4 January (radiant 53.0°, Moon 100%). Those are the three nights worth defending in a calendar; the full ranking for Fuzhou is in the table below.

At the other end of the list the Southern delta-Aquariids manages 3.8 an hour on 31 July with the radiant reaching 48.0° at culmination.

What this latitude allows

Every one of the twelve gets its radiant above the Fuzhou horizon at some point on the night of maximum — a property of the subtropics at 26.1°N, where radiants in both celestial hemispheres rise at some hour. The lowest any of them culminates is the Ursids, at 40.4°.

Ursids (40.4° at culmination) never sets from 26.1°N at all — the radiant stays above the horizon around the clock, so darkness and the Moon are the only things limiting those nights.

Sunset, twilight and real darkness

On the Geminids peak night the Sun sets over Fuzhou at 17:13, astronomical darkness runs 18:35 to 05:19, and sunrise is 06:42 — 10 h 45 min of real darkness inside 13 h 29 min of night. These are Asia/Shanghai times, which is what you set an alarm by.

Across the twelve peak nights of 2026, astronomical darkness at Fuzhou runs from 7 h 48 min on the Southern delta-Aquariids night (31 July) to 10 h 45 min on the Ursids night (23 December). Long nights give a shower room to perform even when its radiant rises late.

Moon luck in 2026

Moon phase makes or breaks a meteor year. In 2026 the showers that catch a dark Moon from Fuzhou are Perseids (0% lit, 79.6/h).

Working against them, Quadrantids (100% lit), Orionids (78% lit), eta-Aquariids (79% lit) run into a bright Moon for most of the dark window, which is already priced into the rates quoted on this page.

Near Fuzhou

The closest other cities covered here are Putian (75 km SSW), Quanzhou (147 km SSW), Xiamen (215 km SW), Taipei (249 km ESE), Taichung (254 km SSE). Within a few tens of kilometres the radiant altitudes are effectively identical, so the reason to open a neighbour's page is the clock: sunset, moonrise and the peak window all shift with longitude and, across a border, with the time zone.

15 of the 300 cities lie within 500 km of here, and 92 share its country. The nearest, Putian, is 75 km SSW on a bearing of 203°.

What this page does not know

Light-pollution data for this location is not connected yet. Every rate here is computed against the reference rural sky the zenithal hourly rate is defined for (naked-eye limiting magnitude 6.5) and is not a statement about how bright this city's sky is. When the light-pollution layer lands these numbers will be recomputed and will generally fall.

Cloud cover is not baked into this page — it is a forecast that changes by the hour, so it is resolved live rather than at build time and shows as "unavailable" in the tables rather than being assumed to be zero. 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 figures quoted here. 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.

All twelve showers from Fuzhou, best first

Every annual meteor shower ranked by the rate expected from Fuzhou in 2026.
Shower Peak (local) Radiant max Moon Window Meteors/h
Geminids 14 December 21:41 83.7° 26% 22:00–06:00 149.1
Perseids 13 August 10:00 56.9° 0% 01:00–05:00 79.6
Quadrantids 4 January 05:12 53.0° 100% 04:00–06:00 35.8
Orionids 22 October 02:23 78.2° 78% 02:00–05:00 19.6
April Lyrids 23 April 03:29 82.4° 34% 01:00–05:00 17.8
Leonids 18 November 07:46 68.7° 52% 03:00–06:00 11.6
eta-Aquariids 6 May 17:01 30.6° 79% 03:00–05:00 9.5
Southern Taurids 6 November 02:53 76.6° 13% 21:00–05:00 6.8
Northern Taurids 13 November 02:11 83.0° 11% 21:00–05:00 5.0
Ursids 23 December 06:07 36.9° 97% 04:00–06:00 4.3
October Draconids 9 October 09:14 49.2° 5% 19:00–22:00 3.8
Southern delta-Aquariids 31 July 21:23 47.9° 96% 22:00–05:00 3.8

Rates are the ideal-sky ceiling. Cloud cover is not included on this prerendered page — it is resolved live, and it can only reduce these numbers.

Geminids rate through the night of 14 December 2026

0 75 150 18:00 21:00 00:00 03:00 06:00

Meteors per hour for one observer under the reference sky, Asia/Shanghai local time.

Hour by hour: Geminids, 14 December 2026

Hourly radiant altitude, Moon position, limiting magnitude and expected rate for the Geminids from Fuzhou.
Local Radiant Moon alt Moon lit Sun alt Cloud Lim. mag Meteors/h
18:00 -9.3° 39.6° 24% -10.5° n/a 2.34 0.0
19:00 1.1° 30.4° 24% -23.3° n/a 6.26 2.2
20:00 12.4° 19.5° 25% -36.4° n/a 6.34 27.5
21:00 24.3° 7.6° 25% -49.8° n/a 6.43 58.0
22:00 36.6° -4.8° 25% -63.2° n/a 6.50 89.5
23:00 49.2° -17.6° 26% -76.6° n/a 6.50 113.6
00:00 61.9° -30.4° 26% -87.1° n/a 6.50 132.3
01:00 74.3° -43.3° 26% -75.5° n/a 6.50 144.4
02:00 83.7° -55.9° 27% -62.1° n/a 6.50 149.1
03:00 76.7° -67.7° 27% -48.7° n/a 6.50 146.0
04:00 64.5° -76.0° 27% -35.3° n/a 6.50 135.4
05:00 51.8° -73.9° 28% -22.3° n/a 6.50 117.9
06:00 39.2° -63.8° 28% -9.5° n/a 1.89 1.2

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