Dark skies mean good Orionid meteor shower viewing

[Fansome]

Dark skies mean good Orionid meteor shower viewing

Unlike last year with its waning supermoon getting in the way, this year’s dark skies will mean great viewing for the annual Orionid meteor shower.

The Orionids last from Oct. 15 to Oct. 29 this year, but the peak will be overnight Friday Oct. 20 to Sunday, Oct. 22. The moon, which will be entering its first quarter phase starting Friday, already just a sliver in the sky, will have set before Orion even rises in the eastern sky. Look for it starting around 9 p.m.

The best viewing, though, will be when Orion is overhead at 1:30 a.m. There’s no need for binoculars or a telescope. Just find a dark sky for best viewing, let your eyes adjust and enjoy the show.

It's the Earth passing through the debris field of Halley's comet, which last passed by our place in space in 1985 and won't return until 2061.

The Orionids happen each year in mid-October and sometimes into November. On a moonless dark sky night, you can catch up to 80 an hour in the best years, but more likely 20-30 an hour for 2017.

They travel at 148,000 mph and leave a pretty cool fireball streak in the sky when you can see them that can be as bright as Venus.

[Ct Yankee]

I missed the daytime one in the article but saw a pair at about 2330 utc on 21 Oct at a public star gazing event - very neat.

http://www.nhregister.com/local/article/Daytime-fireball-seen-over-Connecticut-12289966.php

[Pigmeat]

The one time I saw a true fireball was during the Orionids my Sr. year of HS. My girlfriend lived on a ridge out in the country, it was an unseasonably warm night for late October, we were in the back of my truck cuddled up and enjoying the skies after midnight when one came across the sky with a shower of sparks making a crackling noise. (It was dead quiet out there.)

I tried to convince her it was sign that we should be doing something else than cuddling, but she wasn't buying it. That's what I get for dating the class valedictorian.

That was an interesting four years of HS, I got to witness two rare phenomena, the Fireball of Lick Creek, and ball lightning while waiting for the bus home on a humid, getting ready storm afternoon. The later the damnedest thing I ever saw, in both it's behavior and the effects it had on the kids who saw it, about 20 of us. We were all looking at after someone mentioned seeing an odd speck of light across the valley. It came closer and closer, changing in both size and color, primarily a combo of of orange, red, and yellow.

It came close to ground about 30 yards away, about the size of a soccer ball and flat, moving a little over walking speed, in an up and down sine wave, changing shapes and colors as it cut across a section of street at about a 75% horizontal angle, passing by us by about two yards away, by this time, now the size of a beach ball but two dimensional, again it looked like a flat disc. It went past us for another ten yards and passed behind a stand of small, but dense hemlocks. Not less than five seconds after going behind those trees, it gave out a loud boom, which startled us out out trying to comprehend what happened.

A few of us ran around the side to see what happened, as the teachers parking lot was behind those trees. I think we were all hoping it had blown enough their cars sky-high, we get to skip the last week of school. No such luck, not a scorch mark on the ground, the branches on the trees were fine, as were the cars, drat!

What was so odd was of the kids who had witnessed it, a solid third of them couldn't remember a thing about it the next day?