Looking to the Stars: NASA Touts ‘Beautiful’ Meteor Shower Wednesday

Heads up for stargazers: an annual meteor shower promises early on Wednesday morning, a "short, beautiful show" worth getting - or staying - for this year.

The Quadrantids, called a little-known meteor shower after an extinctconstellation will be for a few hours after the summit on Jan. 3 04.00 clock. The Agency has billed as "an excellent chance for hardy souls begin to observe the year with some late-night meteor." (Alas, it appears only in the northernhemisphere.)

The shower has a maximum speed varies from about 100 meteors per hour between 60-200, according to NASA press release. Its scientists believeQuadrantids come from an asteroid - as 2003 EH1 - which broke a few centuries ago.

To expect the small debris Wednesday, has seen hundreds of years spentcircling around the sun and enters our atmosphere at 90,000 miles per hour. Itwill burn up to 50 miles above the earth's surface, producing the muchhoped-visible shower. Or as NASA puts it, "a fiery end of a long journey."