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This week stargazers will be able to see up to 25 shooting stars per hour fly across the night sky as the Orionid Meteor Shower puts on its annual show. These meteors streak across the sky each October, through until November 7 – but peak viewing is expected on Wednesday, October 21 around midnight. This cosmic event happens when Earth passes through stream of debris left behind Comet Halley – the parent comet of the Orionid shower. You should be able to see the shooting stars from whatever direction you look, but they will appear to come from the constellation...

As I wrote a couple of days ago, the annual Geminid meteor shower peaked last night, raining down a magnificent display of shooting stars. Did you go out and watch? A lot of photographers did. One was John Chumack, an accomplished astrophotographer, who captured this amazing shot of three meteors: Chumack was in Yellow Springs, Ohio on the evening of the 12th (the day before the peak!) using a simple DSLR camera and a fisheye lens. This was a 25-second exposure, enough to see Orion, Jupiter (the bright “star” above Orion), Gemini—the direction from which the eponymous meteors appear to...

Picture credit: TheCabal"I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat"LINK TO THREAD TEN Iran seeks swap of Brits for suicide attackers Report says 40 Revolutionary Guard 'volunteers' held by UK Iran apprehended British military personnel and Navy vessels earlier this week in order to secure release of 40 "suicide operations volunteers" held by the UK, according to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard source. The source told the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the British Army command in Iraq received the demand from the Revolutionary Guard, reported the Middle East Media Research Institute. According to the source,...