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This week the Orionid meteor shower reaches its peak on the night of 20-21 October. The chart shows the view looking south-east from London at 3am BST on the morning of 21 October, by which time the meteor shower’s radiant point will have risen high into the sky.
At their best, the Orionids are a moderate shower with maximum rates of between 10 and 20 meteors an hour. This year, the moon will have been full on 17 October, so will be a waning gibbous on the evening of the peak. This will wash the fainter meteors from view, reducing the numbers.
All the same, the shower is worth watching because the Orionids are fast-moving and often leave persistent trails in the sky. Occasionally, they also produce bright fireballs.
They are called the Orionids because they appear to radiate from a patch of sky in the constellation known as Orion, the hunter. The dust particles themselves that burn up to create the meteors come from the tail of the famous Halley’s comet, which was named after Edmund Halley, who lived in the 17th and 18th century. Halley, last seen in 1986 and not due to return until 2061, was the first comet to be recognised as periodic, meaning that it regularly returns to Earth’s skies.