Get Ready For A Big Event In The Sky This Weekend

If you look up to the sky starting in the early morning hours this Saturday, Oct. 21st, you will get a good look at the Orionid meteor shower...

The Orionids are dust from Halley’s comet visible in October every year. You may wonder how could this be an annual event from a comet that only shows up every 75 years?

Meteors, also known as “shooting stars” are actually stationary space debris left by moving celestial bodies. They don’t really “shower” the earth. The meteors are still, it’s the Earth that’s moving.

Each year in October, the Earth, on its elliptical orbit around the sun, moves into the dust trail left by Halley’s comet. Some of the meteors are pulled into earth’s atmosphere where they get burned up. That’s what creates the shower effect.

The meteors appear to shoot out of the constellation Orion, thus the name 'Orionid'. The meteor shower will take place from Oct. 2nd to Nov. 7th, but the frequency peaks between Oct. 20th and 21st. The meteor shower should be visible from anywhere in the U.S. during that time.