I observed one just last night, in Dallas County, looking west
Thanks for the reminder.
so when and where should we look in Central FL? Not that we could see them here with all the lights, but we can hope!
idx
I had a pretty good show sitting in the treeline this morning. Saw lots of meteors. No deer....
I will look, but several inches of snow is expected and the sky is likely to be occluded.
Early morning is too difficult. Could they reschedule this for the previous evening before we go to bed?? That would be MUCH more convenient!!
If there's a break in the cloud cover, I might consider freezing my tookus off watching for them. :')
their paths trace back to a spot in the constellation Orionfrom 2001's Orionid news:
Swordmaker, Halley's Comet mentioned.Halley's Comet Returns ... in Bits and Pieces"It's the annual Orionid meteor shower," explains Bill Cooke, a member of the Space Environments team at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). "Every year in October Earth passes through a stream of dusty debris shed long ago by Halley's comet." When bits of comet dust -- most no larger than grains of sand -- strike Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate, they become "shooting stars.".. The Orionids -- so named because they appear to streak out of a point (called the radiant) in the constellation Orion -- will peak on Sunday morning, October 21st... The October Orionids are cousins of the eta Aquarids -- a mostly southern hemisphere meteor shower in May. Both spring from Halley's comet. "Earth comes close to the orbit of Halley's comet twice a year, once in May and again in October," explains Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Although the comet itself is rarely nearby -- it's beyond the orbit of Saturn now -- Halley's dusty debris constantly moves through the inner solar system and causes the two regular meteor showers. In 1986, the last time Comet Halley swung past the Sun, solar heating evaporated about 6 meters of dust-laden ice from the comet's nucleus. That's typical, say researchers. The comet has been visiting the inner solar system every 76 years for millennia, shedding dust each time... "The orbital evolution of Halley's dust is a very complicated problem," notes Cooke. No one knows exactly how long it takes for a dust-sized piece of Halley to move to an Earth-crossing orbit -- perhaps centuries or even thousands of years. However, one thing is certain: "Orionid meteoroids are old."
NASA
Oct. 17, 2001