A Meteor Shower in Orion

The moon is a thin waning crescent today, which means the night sky over the next week will be dark and ideal for viewing galaxies in Pegasus, Andromeda, and Triangulum.  But there’s another spectacle this week… the Orionid meteor shower.  And if the experts are right, this year’s Orionids will put on a fine show.

Like all meteor showers, the Orionids occur as the Earth passes through the debris-strewn path of a comet, in this case, Halley’s Comet.  The meteors are simply tiny bits of ice and dust that fell away from the comet and ran into our atmosphere.  As in all such showers, the meteors appear to originate from a point in the sky called the radiant.  For this shower, the radiant lies in the constellation Orion.  Hence the name.

Here’s an image of the Orionids in 2006.

The Orionids run from October 17-25, with the peak predicted for early on October 21.  The meteors will be visible to observers in both hemispheres.  Just look up anywhere into the sky with your unaided eye and wait.  You’ll see some eventually.  If you can trace back the direction of a meteor to the radiant in Orion, that means you likely saw an Orionid.  If not, you saw a random meteor.  You’ll likely see more meteors after midnight, when the Earth turns into the debris field of Halley’s famed comet.

At its peak, the Orionids can display as many as 30 meteors per hour.  That’s just half of what you’d see during August’s Perseids, but it’s still an impressive sight.  Some meteor scientists believe number of Orionids fluctuates on a 12-year cycle.  If they’re right, this year should exhibit a peak… so it may be a vintage year for this shower.  We’ll see.

Watching a meteor shower is a pleasant way to spend a night.  But it’s also fairly easy to photograph a meteor shower.  All you need is a tripod and a camera that allows you to open the shutter for several minutes.  A digital SLR camera is ideal.  Point the camera anywhere in the sky, open the shutter, and wait.  This is one of the easiest types of astrophoto you can take.  To learn more about taking your own photos of meteor showers and other sights in the night sky, simply click here…

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