Meteor shower tonight! Orionid meteor shower begins at 1 am
(Read article summary)Meteor shower tonight? Yep, peak viewing times for the Orionid meteor shower begins tonight (er... tomorrow) at 1 am.
Leonid meteor shower times: When you should look skyward
Are you ready for some meteors? Tuesday night party! Well, that's how the song might go if Hank Williams Jr. was singing the pre-game to tonight's Orionid meteor shower.
But as far as we can tell, Williams isn't adding this to his Monday Night Football schedule and we couldn't find the pre-game party anyway.
But that doesn't mean the show's not going to go on. Anything but. Tonight and tomorrow morning are the peak viewing times of the Orionid meteor shower.
Monitor colleague Pete Spotts suggests you don't go to sleep tonight. Or if you do, do it now and set your alarm for 1 a.m. because that's when -- as Deoin Sanders would say -- it's "prime time." (By the way, the 1 a.m. schedule is good no matter what time zone you live in, which makes it convenient to remember).
The viewing should be good until dawn. Right before sunrise could even be the best time to view.
That's a lot of rocks
Although the Orionids historically have produced between 10 and 20 meteors an hour, it's trending high.
"Since 2006, the Orionids have been one of the best showers of the year, with counts of 60 or more meteors per hour," said Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office.
Many meteor scientists believe that 2009 will be more of the same -- lots of meteors.
I need GPS
That's good news for skywatching enthusiasts. But what if you're not an astronomer. How do you know where to look?
We advise -- up.
Really, that's all you need to know. It's not like you are trying to find Uranus. It's not a fixed location. The Earth is moving into the field of meteors so they can be viewed anywhere in the night sky.
