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When Suzy Kop entered her father's bedroom on May 8, 2023, she was stunned to find a grapefruit-sized rock next to a big dent on the wooden floor. Upon further investigation, the New Jersey resident saw two holes in the ceiling. It appeared that the stone had struck the floor with such great force that it rebounded and punched a second hole before landing back.

This year, the Eta Aquarids meteor shower runs April 19th to May 28th, peaking May 5th just before morning twilight. The Eta Aquarids are visible all across the globe but are more pronounced in the Southern Hemisphere sky. It is there that the Eta Aquarids can produce up to 20 to 40 meteors per hour. In the mid-northern latitudes, the count is closer to 10 meteors per hour. There is an opportunity to see a few meteors late evening (post-sunset on May 4th) as this is when “earthgrazers” are best seen. Earthgrazers tend to be fewer in quantity but are...

Eta Aquarids have a most interesting lineage. Unlike some of the other annual meteor displays whose history can be traced back for many centuries, the Eta Aquarids were not "officially" discovered until the late 19th century. In 1870, while sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, Lt. Col. G.L. Tupman sighted 15 meteors on the morning of April 30, and another 13 a few mornings later. All the meteors Tupman sighted appeared to emanate from the constellation of Aquarius. Then in 1876, professor Alexander Stewart Herschel pointed out that the orbit of Halley’s comet nearly coincided with Earth's orbit around May 4,...

The Early History of humansSince the olden days, humans have looked up in the sky and blamed astronomical events for the unpleasant things happening to them (which was purely a coincidence). Not only this, but humans had also praised the occasions when a good thing happened after a few astronomical sightings (which was also coincidental). I am talking about the events that include sighting a comet, meteor shower or Northern lights, and even novas. In the 15th century, Pope Callixtus III excommunicated comets as an ‘Instrument of the Devil’. In 1835-36, when Halley’s Comet arrived, people assumed that it had...

It’s almost time to look up, because the Orionids are coming to the Northern Hemisphere from October 16-24. You’ll be able to see the shooting stars without the need for a telescope or binoculars. But to see them at their very best, you’ll want to wake up early: from 4:00-5:00 A.M Daylight Savings Time, according to Farmer’s Almanac, you should be able to see anything from 10 to over 30 meteors each hour. What is it, precisely, that you’re watching in the night sky? That’d be trails of cosmic dust from Halley’s Comet sparking up against Earth’s atmosphere at speeds...

What better way to celebrate the start of May than by catching a glimpse of a meteor shower? The 2021 Eta Aquarid meteor shower will peak on the evening of Tuesday, May 4, through the early morning of Wednesday, May 5, according to AccuWeather. The month of May starts off with the Eta Aquarid meteor shower. Mercury will be visible in the middle of the month, and some parts of the U.S. will see a super total lunar eclipse on the 26th. What better way to celebrate the start of May than by catching a glimpse of a meteor shower?...

The American Meteor Society says the flash of light that was spotted on Wednesday afternoon in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maryland and Delaware was a fireball.

This weekend presents the Orionid meteor shower at its best, and tonight – the night of October 20-21, 2017 – may well be the shower’s peak night. Late Saturday night and Sunday morning may be good times to watch as well. On both of these nights, meteors should become visible starting at late evening. They’ll probably be most prolific in the few hours before dawn on October 21, but try watching before dawn on October 22, too. From a dark site, you might see a maximum of about 10 to 15 meteors per hour. Fortunately, today is only one day...

October is jam-packed with sky-watching delights, from shooting stars created by a famed comet to a celestial dance featuring the moon, Mars, and Venus. The night skies will also showcase a far-flung planet at its best for the year, while early mornings will offer a lunar hide-and-seek with a brilliant star. So dust off those binoculars, and mark your October calendar! Mars and Venus Join Forces—October 5 Moon Meets Stellar Bull's Eye—October 9 Moon Buzzes Beehive—October 13 Moon Eclipses Leo’s Heart—October 15 Zodiacal Lights—October 15-30 Planetary Pair Hosts Moon—October 17 Big, Bright Uranus—October 19 Orionid Meteor Shower Peaks—October 21 Bouncing...

Explanation: Leonid meteors rained down on planet Earth this week, the annual shower of dusty debris from the orbit of Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. Leonids streak through this composite night skyview from a backyard observatory in southern Ontario. Recorded with camera fixed to a tripod, the individual frames capture the bright meteor activity throughout the night of November 16/17, about a day before the shower's very modest peak. The frames are registered to the fixed field of view, so the meteor trails are not all aligned to the background star field recorded that same evening when nebula-rich Orion stood above the southern...

The sighting came as the Earth passed through the debris cloud from Halley’s Comet, which produces the annual Orionid meteor shower. Bill Cooke of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, told ABC News there were "several bright Orionids last night, as well as a spectacular fireball over middle Tennessee" that he said broke apart at 24 miles altitude just south of Nashville.

A meteor shower spawned by history’s most famous comet will peak this weekend, and the show could be dazzling for observers with clear skies, experts say. The Orionid meteor shower will reach its zenith overnight from Saturday to Sunday (Oct. 20-21) as Earth plows through debris shed by Halley’s Comet on its path around the sun. The most impressive display should come a few hours before dawn Sunday, when our planet hits the densest patch of Halley’s detritus. "Flakes of comet dust hitting the atmosphere should give us dozens of meteors per hour," Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment...

Bits of Halley's Comet will streak into the Earth's atmosphere before dawn on Sunday during the peak of the eta Aquarid meteor shower. Although moonlight will make all but the brightest meteors impossible to see, those that are visible may be quite spectacular due to the geometry of the shower. Halley's Comet last swung by the Earth in 1986 and now lies in the outer solar system. But every time it passes near the Sun on its 76-year orbit, the nucleus of the icy object sheds about 6 metres of material, which spreads out along the comet's orbit. Twice a...

Oct. 17, 2001: Next Sunday, try doing something out of the ordinary: Wake up at 3 a.m. Put on warm clothes. Step outside. Look up. If the skies are cloudy, go back to bed. Otherwise keep looking. Before long you'll spot something that makes the trip outside worthwhile: a bright shooting star -- and a genuine piece of Halley's comet! "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 ...

Sunday morning [Sat-Sun overnight] will offer another opportunity to view one of the best meteor showers of the fall with over a dozen meteors streaking across the night sky every hour. Clear skies will bring excellent viewing conditions for those across the eastern United States while clouds, rain and wildfire smoke obscure the shower for some areas in the western and central U.S. The Orionids is an annual meteor shower that is caused by debris left behind by Halley’s Comet burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. “The shower will produce somewhere between 10 and 20 meteors per hour,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist...

Halley's comet portrayed on ancient coin Heather Catchpole ABC Science Online Wednesday, 19 May 2004 Could the star shape on the king's crown be Halley's comet? A rare ancient coin may feature an early record of Halley's comet, researchers say. The coin features the head of the Armenian king Tigranes II the Great, who reigned from 95 to 55 BC. A symbol on his crown that features a star with a curved tail may represent the passage of Halley's comet in 87 BC, say the Armenian and Italian researchers. Their research will be published in Astronomy & Geophysics, a journal...

Explanation: The early morning hours of May 6 were moonless when grains of cosmic dust streaked through dark skies. Swept up as planet Earth plows through dusty debris streams left behind periodic Comet Halley, the annual meteor shower is known as the Eta Aquarids. This inspired exposure captures a meteor streak moving left to right through the frame. Its trail points back across the arc of the Milky Way to the shower's radiant above the local horizon in the constellation Aquarius. Known for speed Eta Aquarid meteors move fast, entering the atmosphere at about 66 kilometers per second. Still waters...

The newest episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" dove into all things big and small including the history of modern science. Aired Sunday night (March 23), the third episode of the reboot of Carl Sagan's beloved TV show "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" explains how knowledge of the workings of gravity, comets and the solar system changed the way that humans look at the stars and science.

A piece of the famous Halley's comet likely slammed into Earth in A.D. 536, blasting so much dust into the atmosphere that the planet cooled considerably, a new study suggests. This dramatic climate shift is linked to drought and famine around the world, which may have made humanity more susceptible to "Justinian's plague" in A.D. 541-542 — the first recorded emergence of the Black Death in Europe. The new results come from an analysis of Greenland ice that was laid down between A.D. 533 and 540. The ice cores record large amounts of atmospheric dust during this seven-year period, not...