THE FIRST METEOR shower of the year will be visible in Ireland tonight.

The Quadrantid meteor shower is expected to peak at 3am, and with clear skies will be visible until early tomorrow morning.

David Moore, the founder of Astronomy Ireland, said hopeful stargazers can see the shower between midnight and dawn.

Speaking to The Journal, he said: “There is a bit of a moon up, which is a bit of a problem in that all the faint [meteors] will be a bit swamped out.

“But it means people in cities get the same view as people who live in the countryside.”

While the shower is visible to the naked eye when in an area with low light pollution, the peak occurs just before the full moon, so moonlight will cause some interference.

The Quadrantid is among the strongest and most consistent meteor showers, and could reach a maximum rate of 110 meteors per hour.

Quadrantids are blue meteors with fine trains that appear to come from the constellation Bootes, near the Big Dipper.

Meteors are pieces of debris which enter Earth’s atmosphere at speeds of up to 70 kilometres per second, vaporising and causing the streaks of light we call meteors.

Additionally, unlike other meteor showers that tend to stay at their peak for about two days, the peak period of the Quadrantids is only for a few hours.

Moore said the best place to watch the event is an area with as much view of the sky as possible. “Don’t get hemmed in by buildings or trees.”

“If anyone wants to count how many [meteors] they see every 15 minutes, that has real scientific value – that’s how we figure out how long these showers last for, and how intense they are.”

Budding astronomers can submit these figures on the Astronomy Ireland website.

Additional reporting by PA