u/pattyofurniture400

Context

Firmamentes is a Bronze-Age world inhabited by humans and several other sentient species – centaurs, intelligent bears a la Golden Compass, and giants. There are many areas unexplored by humans, or dominated by nonsentient creatures like dragons and phoenixes, to the extent that they would be difficult to establish any permanent human presence in. Being based on the night sky, it of course draws heavily from Greek Mythology. My goal is to keep that inspiration and tell my own stories inspired by the old ones. For example, the seafarers of the Perseid Coast have been at war for decades with the Andromedaids, claiming that the princess and rightful heir to the Andromadaid throne is being kept captive by usurpers and that they need to free her and restore her to her throne. The Orion Highlands are home not to one famous hunter, but to a civilization of semi-nomadic big-game hunters. They built their capital in the caldera of Mount Betelgeuse, unaware that it may go supervolcano at any time. The globe is the main product of my worldbuilding so far, but I have some lore for each constellation and hope to use it as a setting for a story! Ask me about any region on the map!

2026-specific version

2027-specific version

I made this chart because I couldn’t find one online. If there’s already a good one out there, or if you have corrections to mine, let me know!

Whenever I hear about meteor showers, it’s usually in the form of an announcement “xyz meteor shower peaks tonight at 2:51 AM”. Sometimes they include the Zenithal Hourly Rate, but I feel there is still a lot of context missing. How does that ZHR compare to the best meteor showers of the year? How does it compare to the background rate of any random day of the year? And how much does it matter if I miss the peak by an hour, or a day, or a week? I thought “there ought to be a chart that combines all the meteor showers in one place, adds them to the background rate, and gives you the bottom line of ‘how many meteors can I see on any given night’”.

So here’s what I came up with! The first is general to any year, and shows a best-case curve and a medium-case curve depending on the moon and light pollution (the worst-case curve is always zero). The next two are specific to 2026 and 2027, taking into account the phase of the moon on each day of those years.

My source for almost everything is this great site that explains the background rate, how to correct for your latitude and the moon, and rates for the main showers. I also used Wikipedia and some researchgate figures to find minor showers and the distribution curves. (other sources in comments)

There’s necessarily some information missing, like how different showers can have different colors or longer tails, year to year variability, and the rare chance of meteor storms. It is made for mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, such as the US or southern Europe, so it won’t be as accurate to other latitudes. But I think it captures the general idea fairly well. It also doesn’t capture what time the moon rises – since most people will want to stargaze before midnight, the waning moon should be preferable, I hope to account for this in a later iteration.

The main results seem to be 1) the moon matters a lot, and 2) the minor meteor showers don’t matter much. Not to rain on anyone who wants to be excited about them, but if you want to see meteors, go out on any night and look up for a while, you’ll have a good chance of seeing one! Getting out of town on a random cloudless, moonless night will get you a much better chance than staying up until the exact peak of a minor shower if the weather/moon/city lights aren’t favorable. By far the best times of year are mid-December and mid-August, but even then, missing the peak by a day or two is fine, so wait for the better weather rather than the peak time.

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[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]