Here Come the Orionids!
Comments(10)
The sky map for the Orionids, click for a larger version, Credit science@NASA
One nice thing about October is the Orionids meteor shower and it is coming tomorrow.
The best time to view the shower is in the early morning Wednesday (October 21, 2009). Oh I know, the morning, ugh. This one is worth it! I just love the Orionids. Hey just the chance to see a fireball, oh yeah, let me tell you if you see one the effort seem trivial.
You could see up to 60 meteors per hour and by the way if you can’t get up in the morning, you can borrow my cat. No? Ok don’t worry go out on next three subsequent mornings, the trail of debris is pretty wide. You can go out late too, by the way, Orion is rising in the East about 10:45 pm in your local time zone so anytime after that is fine, the constellation will be due south at around 03:30 am your local time.
What are the showers? Debris from Halley’s Comet! I was reading Science@NASA’s story about the shower and they mentioned the 2006 show, I remember that one in particular, fireballs aplenty, low and slow.
From Science@NASA:
According to Japanese meteor scientists Mikiya Sato and Jun-ichi Watanabe, 2006 marked Earth’s first encounter with some very old debris. “We have found that the [elevated activity of 2006] was caused by dust trails ejected from 1P/Halley in 1266 BC, 1198 BC, and 911 BC,” they wrote in the August 2007 edition of Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan. In their paper “Origin of the 2006 Orionid Outburst,” Sato and Watanabe used a computer to model the structure and evolution of Halley’s many debris streams stretching back in time as far as 3400 years. The debris that hit Earth in 2006 was among the oldest they studied and was rich in large fireball-producing meteoroids.
Pretty cool eh?
Easy to find too, face southeast, look up. You can’t miss them, just look generally towards the constellation Orion. I put Science@NASA’s finders chart up to help.
Repeat after me: Please no clouds, please no clouds, please no clouds. Set your alarm clocks.
Oh, goodie!!! It’s supposed to be clear and should be able to see quite a lot! Got to set my alarm clock!
Hi Tom,
I think many of your blog fans don´t live in USA.
I live in the southernmost city in the southern hemisphere, should I look north-east? will I be able to see them?
Hi Alejandro,
My appologies, YES you are right on, look to the northeast, and where I mentioned at 03:30 look to your north (instead of my south). You should be able to find Orion with no problem.
Have a look at Skymaps.com for a skymap for the southern hemisphere. I love this site:
http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html
[...] remnants of comet Halley, appear to stream form the direction of the constellation Orion. Check out Tom’s Astronomy Blog and Science@NASA for more [...]
It would be better for those don’t have any chance to grab the real live view of Orionid Meteor Shower, to take a look at the awesome footage at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9V5Ba0_9Xs
Hope it helps those meteor catcher in some ways.
It doesn’t matter which direction you look, as long as it’s up! Look toward any part of the sky that offers the widest, darkest view. If you look toward Orion in an area that is obscured by trees, clouds, haze or light pollution from nearby cities, you will see fewer meteors than if you looked the opposite direction toward clear air. The origin is just the area that the meteors appear to come from, it isn’t an area of greater quantity. Straight up towards Zenith is best. There’s less atmosphere that way to obscure your view. Snuggling with someone you find attractive is proven to dilate the pupils!!! The wider aperture the better.
Yeah, Like me..got up looked out the bedroom window, went running out, the one little clear patch was gone. Darned clouds.
Thank you Tom. Unfortunately we had a cloudy night !
thank you for the heads up!!!!!!! i went out by a cliff, sat down and waited for the meteor shower….. it was a beauty. the sky was clear, the stars were bright. wow!!!!!!!!
God I love living in the city…