January 4, 2011 The moon set at about 3:00am. The sky was dark and spotted with stars. The air was crisp and the temperature dropped to about 12ºF. It was a clear night, perfect to observe the quadrantid meteor shower, named after the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis, found in the early 19th-century star atlases.
At 3:10am a blue star flashed quickly below Orion's Belt. But the activity was supposed to be in the northeast near the Big Dipper. At about 4:36am there was a quick flash that shot across a short distance, followed by a few more flashes, yet nothing like the anticipated pace of about one meteor per minute. The few that we saw were quick flashes that streaked for a second or less. They burned out at about 50 miles overhead.
The shower was happening as the Earth passed through the narrow trail of debris left by an asteroid called 2003 EH1. Tiny particles the size of pixie dust plunged into the sky at speeds of up to 90,000 mph.
