Two hundred years ago tonight, an Italian astronomer saw something new. He described it this way: “The atmosphere was traversed by a multitude of the luminous bodies known by the name of falling stars.” In other words, he saw a brand-new meteor shower.

The shower is still with us. And it’ll be at its best tomorrow night. It’s known as the Quadrantid shower. Its meteors appear to rain into the atmosphere from the extinct constellation Quadrans Muralis. It represented an instrument that was used to plot the positions of the stars. Today, that part of the sky is in Boštes, the herdsman.

The shower takes place as Earth passes through a trail of debris from an asteroid or dead comet. Bits of rock and dust slam into our atmosphere. They quickly vaporize, forming the streaks of light known as meteors. The Quadrantid shower includes a lot of bigger bits of debris, which form especially bright meteors.

The Quadrantids have the shortest peak of any major meteor shower – only a few hours. During that peak, you might see up to a hundred meteors per hour. Unfortunately for those of us in the United States, the peak is during the daylight hours on Saturday. So the best view should come late tomorrow night.

To see the shower, find a safe skywatching site away from city lights. The meteors can zip across any part of the sky. So bundle up and scan the skies – for a meteor shower that’s marking its bicentennial.

Script by Damond Benningfield