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dawn tomorrow morning (Sunday, October 21). The meteors look like streaks of light in the night sky. They're sometimes called shooting stars.
• Comet Halley - the Orionid's parent object, pictured at the top of this post - last visited Earth in 1986. As the comet moves through space, it leaves debris in its wake that strikes Earth's atmosphere most fully around October 20-22. Around this time every year, Earth is more or less intersecting the comet's orbit.
• The cometary debris left behind by Comet Halley - bits of ice, dust and rubble - create the Orionid meteor shower.
• The forecast calls for the annual Orionid meteor shower to produce the greatest number of meteors before dawn on Saturday morning, October 20, or on Saturday, October 21, 2012. (More likely, it will be Sunday, October 21.) As usual, the best time to watch this shower will be between the hours of midnight and dawn - regardless of time zone. Oftentimes, 10 to 15 meteors per hour can be seen on a dark, moonless night.
• This isn't the year's richest meteor shower, or even the second-richest, but try watching this shower from midnight to dawn, when the most meteors will be flying. If you're hankering to see some meteors, the dark, moonless sky after midnight makes 2012 a fine year for watching the Orionids. In the dark hour before dawn, the sky's brightest planet - Venus - blazes away in the east, while the second-brightest planet - Jupiter - beams high in the southern to southwestern sky. South of the (Continued on page 22)
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