Some information on the meteor showers and eclipse of tonight and tomorrow from spaceweather.com:

“The Quadrantid meteor shower is one of the year’s best, producing more than 100 meteors per hour from a radiant near the North Star. In 2011 forecasters expect the shower to peak sometime between 21:00 UT (3:00 pm EST) on January 3 and 06:00 UT (01:00 am EST) on January 4. The peak is brief, typically lasting no more than an hour or so. Observers who wish to try to catch it are advised to look during the hours before local dawn on Tuesday, Jan. 4th, when the shower’s radiant is high in the sky.

Although the Quadrantids are a major shower, they are seldom observed. One reason is weather. The shower peaks in early January when northern winter is in full swing. Storms and cold tend to keep observers inside…

Another reason is brevity. The shower doesn’t last long, a few hours at most. Even dedicated meteor watchers are likely to miss such a sharp peak. In his classic bookMeteor Astronomy, Prof. A.C.B. Lovell lamented that “useful counts of the Quadrantid rate were made in [only] 24 Januaries out of a possible 68 between 1860 and 1927. … The maximum rate appears to have occurred in 1932 (80 per hour) although the results are influenced by unfavorable weather.”

The source of the Quadrantid meteor shower was unknown until Dec. 2003 when Peter Jenniskens of the NASA Ames Research Center found evidence that Quadrantid meteoroids come from 2003 EH1, an “asteroid” that is probably a piece of a comet that broke apart some 500 years ago. Earth intersects the orbit of 2003 EH1 at a perpendicular angle, which means we quickly move through any debris. That’s why the shower is so brief.”

PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE: After the meteor shower, observers in Europe, northern Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia can witness a partial eclipse of the sun. In western Europe, as much as 86% of the solar disk will be covered by the Moon at dawn, producing a fantastic crescent sunrise on Jan. 4th.