🔭 Astronomical Events
September 7 – 13, 2026
Written by Mia Astrology ✨🌌
There is a particular kind of astronomy week I love almost more than the spectacular ones, because while eclipses and major meteor showers understandably get everyone outside at once, sometimes the best week for actually enjoying the night sky is the one when the Moon quietly gets out of the way, darkness takes over and you suddenly have hours of sky available without a giant glowing lunar spotlight following you around.
September 7–13 is exactly that kind of week.
The Moon spends the first half of the week shrinking into an increasingly delicate waning crescent, the September Epsilon Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak on September 9, the New Moon arrives on September 11, the little-known September Lyncids peak on September 12, and the combination of New Moon darkness and increasingly long September nights creates some of the finest deep-sky observing conditions we have had for weeks.
And here in Iceland, this is the point in the year when I start getting genuinely excited about nighttime again.
August gave us the total solar eclipse and enough celestial drama to keep an astronomy writer occupied for approximately six months, but September gives us something I have missed all summer: darkness that actually behaves like darkness.
By now I can go outside at night and see the sky filling properly with stars again, rather than standing under Icelandic summer twilight at 1:00 AM pretending the slightly darker shade of blue above my head counts as night.
If you have a pair of binoculars that has been sitting in a drawer, get them out.
If you own a telescope, this is its week.
If you own absolutely nothing except a warm coat and the ability to look upward, that works perfectly too.
Because this week the sky is dark, the Moon is almost absent, meteors are moving through it and some of the most beautiful deep-sky objects of the Northern Hemisphere are sliding into prime position.
☄️ THE BIG EVENT
September Epsilon Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks
September 9, 2026
First, an important clarification.
These are not the Perseids we watched in August.
The famous August Perseids and the September Epsilon Perseids are separate meteor showers with different orbital streams and different radiants, although their names understandably make it sound as though someone in the astronomy department ran out of ideas.
The September Epsilon Perseids are active from approximately September 2 through September 23, with maximum activity expected around September 9.
This is a relatively modest shower.
Under ideal dark conditions, the expected zenithal hourly rate is around five meteors per hour.
That number needs context because “five per hour” does not mean you are guaranteed to see one meteor every twelve minutes with the punctuality of public transport in a fictional perfect city.
Meteor activity is irregular.
You may see several within a short period and then nothing for half an hour.
Your actual count depends on cloud, light pollution, how high the radiant is, how much sky you can see and whether you happen to be looking in the right direction when one appears.
What makes these meteors interesting is their speed.
September Epsilon Perseids enter Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 64 kilometres per second, making them extremely fast meteors, and although the shower is small, individual members can be striking.
