One of the year's best displays of meteors will occur this weekend. Called the Orionids, the meteors are bits of rocky debris shed from Halley's Comet that burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
The display will be visible for both northern and southern hemisphere observers and should produce 20 meteors per hour at its peak. Friday night and Saturday night should be best, especially very early in the morning.
Meteors in the Orionid family can appear anywhere in the sky, but their paths trace back to a spot in the constellation Orion, from which they take their name.
The best strategy is to lie down and stare at as large a patch of sky as possible, rather than focusing directly on Orion. Most of the meteors will be faint and most easily seen from a dark site far from city lights.
Halley's Comet passes through the inner solar system every 76 years, littering its orbit with bits of dust and rock as it goes. The Orionid meteors that we see today are due to debris that has built up along Halley's orbital path over thousands of years.
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