The "Quads” show is already happening in our early morning hours, but with this shower, the peak day is the most important. With that said, this might be a poor year for the Quads, at least for the day they peak on, as they will peak at 1045 am Mountain time, or in other words, in the daylight hours on January 3. So the early hours of the third, after the moon sets (after 3am... Note: the moon will be only at 11% full), should be the best time to view them (but, some sources are giving predictions for the peak to be 8 a.m. MST, which would make seeing the Quads a bit easier). But this shower has a brief, strong peak that lasts 6 hours or less, with little activity before and after. When everything does align just right, the Quads deliver at least 1 or 2 meteors visible per minute under excellent sky conditions. Their zenithal hourly rate is a very high 110. In some years it has reached 200. The shower's radiant is in northernmost Boötes, between the end of the Big Dipper’s handle and the head of Draco, in the defunct constellation Quadrans Muralis. The parent body of this shower is a small object designated 2003 EH1 for its discovery year (It’s also known as asteroid 196256, as it hasn’t yet been named) It loops around the Sun every 5½ years between the orbits of Earth and Jupiter. Only in 2004 did meteor specialist Peter Jenniskens discover that this body is responsible for the Quadrantids. It’s not an active comet — more likely it's an “extinct comet” that no longer has any ice to evaporate.