Orionid meteor shower to light up skies this weekend

The annual Orionid meteor shower may have peaked Friday morning, but bright meteors will continue a show across the sky for another night or two, a NASA expert said.

Space.com writes that the meteors are remnants left in the wake of Halley's Comet, and skywatchers can expect to see 15-20 meteors per hour during the height of the shower.

>> Perseid meteor shower lights up northwest skies 

"A good thing about the Orionids is that they tend to either have a double peak or a flat maximum, which means that you can see good Orionid rates for two to three nights," NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke told Space.com. "So if you miss it one night, you can go out the next night and see them."

Orionid meteors appear every year around this time when Earth orbits through an area of space littered with debris from Halley's Comet. Normally, the shower produces 20 or so meteors per hour.

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The meteors are known as "Orionids" because they seem to fan out from a region to the north of the constellation Orion's second-brightest star, the ruddy-hued Betelgeuse.

Here’s the best times to spot meteors, according to CBS News.

Even though the moon turned full this past week and is now on the wane, it will still have an adverse impact on this year's Orionids.

The best plan this year probably would be to observe on the later nights of the display, after Oct. 22, when the radiant (the section of the sky where the meteors seem to originate) will rise before the moon. In mid-northern latitudes on Oct. 24, for example, the radiant will be more than one-third of the way up from horizon to zenith (the point directly overhead) when the moon rises at around 1:25 a.m. local daylight time. Recent studies have shown that about half of all Orionids that are seen leave trails that lasted longer than other meteors of equivalent brightness.

The Orionids are often referred to as the "legacy of Halley's Comet." These tiny rocks and flecks of dust are merely the cosmic litter that the comet has left behind in space along its orbit around the sun.

Halley’s Comet is due to return to the inner solar system in the summer of 2061.

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