If you happen to be up late this evening and there are no clouds in your local sky, you may be in for a worthwhile treat:
The new year kicks off with the Quadrantids, one of 12 annual meteor showers.
The celestial event is typically among the strongest meteor showers and is expected to peak overnight January 3 and 4, according to the American Meteor Society. Sky-gazers in the Northern Hemisphere can best view the shower between the late-night hours of Tuesday and dawn on Wednesday.
The very narrow six-hour window means your opportunity for viewing the shower is there and gone; plus, this year's light show will occur alongside a full moon, meaning it will be even harder to spot:
Moonset will occur just before dawn, providing a very small window to spot the shower against dark skies.
If you like astronomical history, it might interest you to know that this meteor shower may very well have been put into motion half a millennium ago:
The parent body of the Quadrantids was tentatively identified in 2003 by Peter Jenniskens as the minor planet 2003 EH1, which in turn may be related to the comet C/1490 Y1 that was observed by Chinese, Japanese and Korean astronomers some 500 years ago.
