The Witch Head Nebula, pictured in October 2008, is in the constellation Orion, from which the Orionids get their name. The Orionids will reach their annual peak Monday and Tueday. File Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo
The night sky will host one of autumn’s best meteor showers at the start of the new week as the Orionids reach their annual peak.
The display will ramp up on Monday night into the early morning hours of Tuesday, when as many as 20 meteors per hour could streak across the sky.
While a few shooting stars may be visible after sunset, the best part of the show will come during the second half of the night.
Activity typically peaks between 2 a.m. and daybreak, local time, when Earth faces directly into the stream of debris responsible for the shower.
The Orionids get their name from the constellation Orion, but onlookers won’t need to focus on the constellation to see the event. Meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, as long as Mother Nature cooperates.
More than half of the United States is expected to have favorable weather for the peak of the Orionids this year, especially in the southeastern, central and western United States.
Clouds will be a concern for stargazers across New England and most of the Midwest as a pair of storms swirl over the regions. Another storm moving in from the Pacific may also spread clouds across parts of Washington and Oregon.
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For the best views, experts recommend heading to a dark location far from city lights and giving your eyes at least 15 minutes to adjust to the darkness. Avoid looking at any bright lights, such as the screen of a phone, and try to find an area with a large open view of the night sky.
Halley’s Comet connection
Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through clouds of debris left behind by comets or asteroids. In the case of the Orionids, those bits of cosmic dust come from Halley’s Comet, the same comet responsible for the Eta Aquarid meteor shower each May.
Each tiny fragment burns brightly as it collides with Earth’s atmosphere, creating a streak of light that lasts only a moment. Most of these particles are no bigger than grains of sand, though they move at incredible speeds — about 41 miles per second.
After the Orionids fade, more meteor activity is on the way. The Southern Taurids peak on the night of Nov. 4-5, followed by the Northern Taurids on Nov. 11-12 and the Leonids on Nov. 16-17, according to the American Meteor Society.
