Tonight will bring what is expected to be the most spectacular meteor shower of the year. The Quadrantid event will be visible in Western Europe and eastern North America, peaking sometime in the early morning. Already this has triggered newspapers to urge their readers to look skywards (Fox has one of the better items on the Quadrantid).

NASA scientists will observe the shower from a Gulfstream V jet. “We will fly to the North Pole and back to compensate for Earth’s rotation and to keep the stream in view throughout the flight,” says Peter Jenniskens, a principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center (NASA press release).

A fact curiously absent from the NASA press release, but related by a number of news sources, is that the Gulfstream in question is the private jet of Google. The space agency has an agreement with the company that allows Google to park a jet at one of its air fields in return for several million dollars and the occasional loan of a plane for science work.

This is just the latest in a series of super rich geeks sponsoring space projects, including Google’s funding of the Moon X-Prize. You have to wonder at what point the Google boys are going to get bored of letting people have fun with their money and say “let’s do it ourselves”.

Google founds its own space agency? Watch this space.

Image: NASA shot of previous Quadrantids