Orionid Meteor Shower Peaks On Saturday Morning

Edited byMark Dunphy

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Image NASA

The Orionid meteor shower will peak on Saturday morning, 22 October.

The Orionid meteors are made up of debris from a cloud of dust left behind by Halley’s Comet. As Earth passes through this cloud each year, some of the debris falls into Earth’s atmosphere where it heats up and glows brightly, forming the familiar meteors or ‘shooting stars’.

Forecasters expect more than 15 meteors per hour to fly across the sky on Saturday morning when the shower peaks.

The Orionids will appear to come from a source in the eastern sky beside a constellation called Orion, which can be found by looking for the well-known Orion’s Belt, a group of three bright stars in a line.

This year, the Moon and Mars are part of the show.  They’ll form two vertices of a celestial triangle in the eastern sky on Saturday morning while the shower is most active; Regulus is the third vertex.  Blue Regulus and red Mars are both approximately of 1st magnitude, so they are easy to see alongside the 35% crescent Moon.  Many Orionids will be diving through the triangle in the hours before dawn.

A map of the morning sky on Saturday, Oct. 22nd at 5:30 a.m. local time, viewed facing southeast.

“We’re hoping for a great show for this year’s Orionid meteor shower tonight,” said David Moore, Chairman of Astronomy Ireland. “The Moon doesn’t rise until long after midnight so with the darker skies we should be able to see more meteors than usual!”

“The meteors will be visible all over the sky, and you do not need any special equipment to see them”, Mr. Moore added.

Cometary debris streams like Halley’s are so wide, the whole Earth-Moon system fits inside. So when there is a meteor shower on Earth, there’s usually one on the Moon, too.  Unlike Earth, however, the Moon has no atmosphere to intercept meteoroids.  Pieces of debris fall all the way to the surface and explode where they hit.  Flashes of light caused by thermal heating of lunar rocks and moondust are so bright, they can sometimes be seen through backyard-class telescopes.

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