Meteor showers from Surabaya in 2026

Best night of the year · Worth planning for

Geminids — 14 December 2026

Plan for 23:00–04:00 local time: the radiant reaches 50° above the horizon, the Moon is 26% lit, and astronomical darkness lasts 8 h 55 min. Under the reference dark sky that rates about 115 meteors an hour — cloud cover is a runtime fact this page cannot know, so treat it as the ceiling, not a promise.

Maximum (local)
20:41 · 14 December 2026
Night of
14 December 2026
Best window
23:00–04:00
Peak rate
114.9/h
Radiant (best)
50.0° N
Moon
26% lit
Cloud cover
unavailable

Local to Surabaya

Coordinates
7.2°S 112.75°E
Elevation
8 m
Time zone
Asia/Jakarta
Sunset
17:39
Astronomical dusk
18:56
Astronomical dawn
03:51
Sunrise
05:07
Dark hours
8 h 55 min
Solar midnight
23:23
Worth a night
5 of 12

Light-pollution data for this location is not connected yet. No Bortle class is claimed for Surabaya: 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/Jakarta.

Meteor showers over Surabaya in 2026

Twelve showers, one city. From Surabaya, East Java — 7.2°S, 112.75°E, 8 m, Asia/Jakarta — 12 of them put a radiant above the horizon in darkness at maximum, 5 pass ten an hour, and the Geminids tops the 2026 list at 114.9 an hour.

Clock time here runs 31 minutes behind mean solar time, so local solar midnight on the Geminids peak night falls at 23:23 rather than 00:00. Surabaya, East Java is the 110th largest of the 300 cities on this site, with a population of 3.02 million.

The three best nights of 2026 here

The Geminids peaks at 20:41 on 14 December 2026 Surabaya time. Its radiant culminates 50.5° up at 01:32 bearing N, the Moon is 26% lit, and 23:00–04:00 is the window — about 114.9 meteors an hour on the reference sky.

Behind it, the Perseids manages 39.1 an hour on 13 August (radiant 24.7° at best, Moon 0% lit) and the Orionids 18.0 on 22 October (radiant 67.0°, Moon 78%). Those are the three nights worth defending in a calendar; the full ranking for Surabaya is in the table below.

At the other end of the list the Ursids manages 0.0 an hour on 23 December with the radiant reaching 7.1° at culmination, and the faintest one that still puts anything measurable in the sky here is the October Draconids at 1.4 an hour on 9 October.

What this latitude allows

Every one of the twelve gets its radiant above the Surabaya horizon at some point on the night of maximum — a property of the tropics at 7.2°S, where radiants in both celestial hemispheres rise at some hour. The lowest any of them culminates is the Ursids, at 7.1°.

Nothing is circumpolar from 7.2°S among these twelve: every radiant sets at some point, which is why the hourly tables on the shower pages for Surabaya rise and fall rather than staying flat.

Sunset, twilight and real darkness

On the Geminids peak night the Sun sets over Surabaya at 17:39, astronomical darkness runs 18:56 to 03:51, and sunrise is 05:07 — 8 h 55 min of real darkness inside 11 h 28 min of night. These are Asia/Jakarta times, which is what you set an alarm by.

Across the twelve peak nights of 2026, astronomical darkness at Surabaya runs from 8 h 54 min on the Ursids night (23 December) to 9 h 47 min on the Southern delta-Aquariids night (31 July). 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 Surabaya are Perseids (0% lit, 39.1/h).

Working against them, Orionids (78% lit), Quadrantids (100% 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 Surabaya

The closest other cities covered here are Semarang (259 km W), Bandung (569 km W), Jakarta (662 km W), Makassar (775 km ENE), Palembang (1009 km WNW). 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.

1 of the 300 cities lie within 500 km of here, and 7 share its country. The nearest, Semarang, is 259 km W on a bearing of 276°.

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 Surabaya, best first

Every annual meteor shower ranked by the rate expected from Surabaya in 2026.
Shower Peak (local) Radiant max Moon Window Meteors/h
Geminids 14 December 20:41 50.0° 26% 23:00–04:00 114.9
Perseids 13 August 09:00 24.7° 0% 02:00–05:00 39.1
Orionids 22 October 01:23 67.0° 78% 02:00–04:00 18.0
Quadrantids 4 January 04:12 13.8° 100% 04:00–05:00 14.8
April Lyrids 23 April 02:29 48.9° 35% 01:00–05:00 13.6
eta-Aquariids 6 May 16:01 57.5° 79% 03:00–05:00 9.6
Leonids 18 November 06:46 49.2° 52% 02:00–04:00 7.7
Southern Taurids 6 November 01:53 68.8° 13% 21:00–04:00 6.5
Northern Taurids 13 November 01:11 59.8° 11% 21:00–04:00 4.3
Southern delta-Aquariids 31 July 20:23 79.7° 96% 21:00–05:00 3.8
October Draconids 9 October 08:14 21.6° 4% 19:00–20:00 1.4
Ursids 23 December 05:07 0.1° 97% 0.0

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 58 115 19:00 21:00 23:00 01:00 03:00

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

Hour by hour: Geminids, 14 December 2026

Hourly radiant altitude, Moon position, limiting magnitude and expected rate for the Geminids from Surabaya.
Local Radiant Moon alt Moon lit Sun alt Cloud Lim. mag Meteors/h
19:00 -10.7° 38.0° 25% -18.8° n/a 6.20 0.0
20:00 1.9° 23.7° 25% -31.7° n/a 6.30 4.2
21:00 14.2° 9.5° 25% -43.5° n/a 6.42 34.1
22:00 25.9° -4.5° 26% -53.3° n/a 6.50 65.5
23:00 36.4° -18.5° 26% -59.0° n/a 6.50 89.0
00:00 44.8° -32.1° 26% -58.3° n/a 6.50 105.7
01:00 49.8° -45.4° 27% -51.5° n/a 6.50 114.6
02:00 50.0° -57.6° 27% -41.2° n/a 6.50 114.9
03:00 45.4° -67.3° 27% -29.0° n/a 6.50 106.7
04:00 37.2° -70.4° 28% -16.0° n/a 5.44 32.8

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