Twin Meteor Showers Will Glitz the Night Sky Around Halloween—One a Remnant of Halley’s Comet

If you step out onto the porch to gaze at the stars next month, you might notice something different in the night sky. Straining through a thick curtain of modern life—streetlights, digital devices, downtown streets that never sleep—an influx of shooting stars will sparkle just beyond the glare.

October will deliver a solid reason for city dwellers to seek out dark, quiet corners—an enclave of backyard astronomers. Twin meteor showers, the Orionids and Draconids, always return around Halloween and look spectacular. For astrophotographers and night sky newbies alike, the dueling showers are an annual treat.

The Orionids are truly a global citizen, granting skywatchers across North America, Europe, and Asia front-row seats. The Draconids, however, are an exclusive club for the Northern Hemisphere.

Earth periodically slams into the exhaust trail of Halley’s Comet. The Orionids are born of that yearly rendezvous when cosmic crumbs rub so hard against our atmosphere they light up like matches. They hang over Earth’s sky from late September till late November, but this year they’ll peak around Oct. 23.

The Orionids are best viewed after midnight and appear to radiate from the constellation Orion, but they’re actually orbiting our sun, grazing Earth’s upper atmosphere.

The annual shower attracts a cohort of followers. One previous season, despite the city lights, photographer Steve Scanlon headed to a New Jersey soccer field and snapped a shooting star moving at a blistering 44 miles per second.

“On a Jersey Shore night when light pollution usually swallows most of the sky, I stood at the local soccer fields with the camera pointed in a planned direction, and with more hope than certainty,” Scanlon told The Epoch Times.

“Planning paid off. An Orionid meteor cut across the frame, and the constellation Orion was also in the picture. Catching both in one shot made the wait worth it.”

Scanlon’s photo reveals a traveler moving fast enough to cross the continental United States in a matter of minutes. But even at that speed, there is no way the particle actually traveled from Orion, hundreds of light-years away. Yet, strangely enough, if you rewind all the Orionids backward in time they seem to radiate from a single point called the radiant. It’s a trick of perspective.

In truth, they hail from Halley’s Comet, the Orionids’ icy parent. That massive chunk of frozen gas was last seen near Earth in 1986 and won’t return until 2061 as it makes its gargantuan loop around the sun. Meanwhile, the pieces that broke off its surface eons ago will forever intersect with Earth every October.

But the Orionids aren’t the only meteor stream to appear next month. From Oct. 6 till Oct. 10 the Draconids will peak, hailing from an entirely different parent object. Evening is the best time to spot these sporadic meteors.

The comet responsible for the Draconids is a far more regular visitor than Halley’s. The periodic 21P/Giacobini-Zinner veers as close to the sun as Earth before looping outward as far as Jupiter to return every 6.6 years. Its scattered dust becomes the Draconid meteor shower.

These hit the Earth in irregular outbursts, some years with few meteors and others spurting hundreds per hour. It’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll storm this year, but astronomers are leaning toward the possibility that they won’t. They all trace back to the constellation Draco the Dragon.

While meteor chasers will likely hunt both yearly events, they’ll note stark differences between the two. The earlier Draconids produce fewer meteors—around 10 per hour compared to the Orionids’ 20—yet light conditions can make a world of difference. A thin, waning crescent moon will leave the sky completely dark when the Draconids peak, while a bright, waxing gibbous moon will threaten to wash out the Orionids later next month.

It’s possible, however, that meteor showers will overlap across the month of October. So will we be able to tell them apart?

Yes. The two showers bear distinct visual signatures. Because the Orionids rip through the atmosphere at great speed, they burn bright and shatter into many fragments. This is also why they are whiter and less colorful than other showers. A flicker of green or yellow sometimes shines through. Roughly half of the Orionids burst into persistent trains—long streaks of ionized gas—which are also called fireballs.

Meanwhile, the Draconids are lazy, cinematic drifters. Entering the atmosphere at a “sluggish” 12 miles per second, they emit a dim, amberish light.

You can also identify the meteor based on its radiant. Draco the Dragon and Orion the Hunter are separated by a vast distance across the star globe. Look far, far north to find Draco and along the celestial equator for Orion. But it’s best to just lie back on a blanket and absorb the whole sky; the streaks of light will shoot from the radiant in every direction.

A fortunate photographer may capture an Orionid next to Orion like Scanlon did above a New Jersey soccer field. Sometimes a meteor will spark up when you least expect it, as it did for Mike Busch from Brookhaven, New York, when an Orionid photobombed his shot of an epic planetary conjunction.

“The reason I got up was to photograph the alignment of Venus, Jupiter, and Mars,” he said. “I got lucky when the meteor appeared. To the naked eye it was amazing!”