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Spring fireball season is here! This is a special time for people who like to watch the night sky. From January to April, there are not many big meteor showers. But this time of year is famous for producing many bright fireballs.
Astronomers sometimes call this time a "meteor drought." The next major meteor shower, called the Lyrids, will not happen until April. However, if you look at the sky from a dark place, you might see a fireball. A fireball is a very bright meteor. These bright meteors are known as the spring fireballs. Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society (AMS) wrote in February:
… a bright fireball may light up the sky. February is the start of the evening fireball season, when many fireballs seem to happen in the Northern Hemisphere. This lasts well into April.
NASA meteor expert William Cooke first talked about spring fireballs in 2011. He said:
Spring is fireball season. For reasons we don’t fully understand, the number of bright meteors goes up during the weeks around the start of spring.
In 2011, NASA said the number of fireballs can increase by 10 to 30 percent around the March equinox. The year 2016 was a good year for spring fireballs. Vincent Perlerin of the American Meteor Society reported six major fireball events over the United States in just one week during March 2016.
In 2017, Robert Lunsford told EarthSky that the best time to watch for spring fireballs is about a month before the start of spring. He wrote that these fireballs are easy to see in the AMS records. He believes they are real and are caused by the position of a point in the sky called the "antapex radiant." He also thinks a similar event happens in the Southern Hemisphere from August to October, but fewer people are there to report them.
Spring fireballs happen from February to April in the Northern Hemisphere. They may also happen from August to October in the Southern Hemisphere. One possible reason is the position of the "antapex radiant." This point in the sky is highest above the horizon during the evening at this time of year.
You may have heard of the "apex of the sun’s way." This is the direction our solar system is moving through space. The "antapex" is the exact opposite direction.
A NASA website suggested another idea:
The reason [for spring fireballs] is still unknown, but one hypothesis is that more space debris litters this section of Earth’s orbit.
What to look for: Fireballs are meteors brighter than the planet Venus.
When to look: The best time is shortly after sunset.
Location: Find a place with dark, clear skies, far away from city lights.
Meteors are pieces of rocky debris from space. They can be as large as a meter or as small as a grain of sand. When these objects enter Earth’s atmosphere, they burn up because of friction with the air.
NASA scientists once set up a network of cameras on the ground to track and record meteors. The video from these cameras could be used to figure out a meteor’s path and where it came from.
Spring is the best time to see bright fireballs. However, major meteor showers happen throughout most of the year. There is a break, or gap, between the Quadrantid shower in early January and the Lyrid shower in April.
The next major meteor shower will be the Lyrids in April.
In summary, February to April is known as spring fireball season. In some years, the number of bright fireballs in the Northern Hemisphere seems to increase by as much as 30% during this time. Will 2026 be one of those years? Go outside, look up, and see for yourself.