NEW YORK — The year’s first supermoon and meteor shower will sync up in January skies, but the light from one may dim the other.

The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks Friday night into Saturday morning, according to the American Meteor Society. In dark skies during the peak, skygazers typically see around 25 meteors per hour, but this time they’ll likely glimpse less than 10 per hour due to light from Saturday’s supermoon.

“The biggest enemy of enjoying a meteor shower is the full moon,” said Mike Shanahan, planetarium director at Liberty Science Center in New Jersey.

Meteor showers happen when speedy space rocks collide with Earth’s atmosphere, burning up and leaving fiery tails in their wake — the end of a “shooting star.” A handful of meteors are visible on any given night, but predictable showers appear annually when Earth passes through dense streams of cosmic debris.

Supermoons occur when a full moon is closer to Earth in its orbit. That makes it appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than the faintest moon of the year, according to NASA. That difference can be tough to notice with the naked eye.

Supermoons, like all full moons, are visible in clear skies everywhere that it’s night. The Quadrantids, on the other hand, can be seen mainly from the Northern Hemisphere. Both can be glimpsed without any special equipment.

To spot the Quadrantids, venture out in the early evening away from city lights and watch for fireballs before the moon crashes the party, said Jacque Benitez with the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences. Skygazers can also try looking during early dawn hours on Sunday.

Wait for your eyes to get used to the darkness, and don’t look at your phone. The space rocks will look like fast-moving white dots and appear over the whole sky.

Meteor showers are named for the constellation where the fireballs appear to come from. The Quadrantids — space debris from the asteroid 2003 EH1 — are named for a constellation that’s no longer recognized.

The next major meteor shower, called the Lyrids, is slotted for April.

Supermoons happen a few times a year and come in groups, taking advantage of the sweet spot in the moon’s elliptical orbit. Saturday night’s event ends a four-month streak that started in October. There won’t be another supermoon until the end of 2026.

Where to watch the sky in Maryland

Plan to drive away from city lights and into more secluded areas to watch the night sky, the darker the better. Also, make sure to give yourself 20 to 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness.

There are multiple tools online, including DarkSiteFinder and the World Atlas Night Sky Brightness map, that show how dark the night sky will be to help you find a place to travel.

Christian Ready, an associate teaching professor of astronomy at Towson University, recommends Soldiers Delight in Owings Mills and Bear Branch Nature Center in Carroll County.

Carrie Fitzgerald, the planetarium director at Montgomery College, said there’s not a lot of great dark sky locations in Montgomery County because parks that are away from urban lighting aren’t open late enough for optimal viewing.

But with the glow of the supermoon, it’s an opportunity to stay put at home — you could even grab binoculars — and look to the skies after midnight.

Banner reporters Clara Longo de Freitas and Hau Chu contributed to this report.