Oct 21, 2019
Image: The Orionids radiate from a point near the upraised Club of the constellation
Orion the Hunter. The bright star near the radiant point is Betelgeuse - earthsky.org
The Orionid meteor shower will be active from 2 October to 7 November, producing its peak rate of meteors tonight according to in-the-sky.org.
Over this period, there will be a chance of seeing Orionid meteors whenever the shower's radiant point – in the constellation Orion – is above the horizon, with the number of visible meteors increasing the higher the radiant point is in the sky.
Seen from the New York metro area , the shower will not be visible before around 22:14 each night, when its radiant point rises above your eastern horizon. It will then remain active until dawn breaks around 06:46. The shower is likely produce its best displays in the hours around 05:00 EDT, when its radiant point is highest in the sky.
At this time, the Earth's rotation turns the New York metro area to face optimally towards the direction of the incoming meteors, maximising the number that rain vertically downwards, producing short trails close to the radiant point. At other times, there will be fewer meteors burning up overhead, and they will tend to enter the atmosphere at an oblique angle, producing long-lived meteors that may traverse a wide area of the sky before completely burning up.
The shower is expected to reach peak activity at around 20:00 EDT on 21 October 2019.
Observing prospects
At its peak, the shower is expected to produce a nominal rate of around 15 meteors per hour (ZHR). However, this zenithal hourly rate is calculated assuming a perfectly dark sky and that the radiant of the shower is situated directly overhead. In practice, any real observing sight will fall short of these ideal conditions. The number of meteors you are likely to see is thus lower than this, and can be estimated using the ZHR formula.
From the New York metro area vantage point, the radiant of the shower will appear at a peak altitude of 65° above your horizon, and on the basis of this, we estimate that you may be able to see up to 13 meteors per hour at the shower's peak.
The shower will peak close to new moon, and so moonlight will present minimal interference.
The radiant of the shower
Meteor showers arise when the Earth passes through streams of debris left in the wake of comets and asteroids. Over time, these pieces of grit-like debris distribute themselves along the length of the parent object's orbit around the solar system.
Shooting stars are seen whenever one of these pieces of debris collides with the Earth, typically burning up at an altitude of around 70 to 100 km, upon impact with the upper atmosphere.
On certain days of the year, the Earth's orbit passes through particularly dense streams, associated with comets or asteroids which have vented particularly large amounts of solid material to space, and this gives rise to an annual meteor shower. The shower recurs on an annual basis, whenever the Earth passes the particular point in its orbit where it crosses the stream of material.
All of the meteors associated with any particular meteor shower appear to radiate outwards from a common point on the sky, which points back in the direction from which their orbital motion brought them.
This is because all the meteors are travelling in almost exactly the same direction when they cross the Earth's orbit, owing to having very similar orbits to the parent object they came from. They strike the Earth from almost exactly the same direction, and at the same speed.
By determining the position of this radiant point on the sky, it is possible to work out the orbit of the stream giving rise to any particular meteor shower. It is sometimes even be possible to identify the particular body responsible for creating the debris stream, if there is a known comet or asteroid with a very similar orbit.
The parent body responsible for creating the Orionid shower is comet 1P/Halley.
The radiant of the Orionid meteor shower is at around right ascension 06h20m, declination 16°N, as shown by the green circle on the planetarium above.
To see the most meteors, the best place to look is not directly at the radiant itself, but at any dark patch of sky which is around 30–40° away from it. It is at around this distance from the radiant that the most meteors will be seen.
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