LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — Look up before sunrise Thursday and you may catch a streak of light from one of the most famous comets in history.
The Orionid meteor shower reaches its peak overnight Wednesday, Oct. 21, into Thursday, Oct. 22. The meteors are tiny bits of debris shed by Halley’s Comet, which last passed near Earth in 1986. Each October, Earth plows through the dusty trail the comet left behind, and those particles burn up in the upper atmosphere as shooting stars. The same comet is responsible for the Eta Aquariid shower each May.
The Orionids are a steady, dependable shower rather than a spectacular one. Under truly dark skies, observers typically see 10 to 20 meteors an hour at the peak. Orionids are known for being fast, and some leave glowing trails that linger for a second or two.
They also tend to be faint, which is where Moore County has an advantage. City lights wash out dim meteors, but much of the county still has the kind of dark country sky that big-city stargazers have to drive hours to find.
The moon is the catch
This year’s peak arrives about four days before the Oct. 26 full moon, the Hunter’s Moon. A bright waxing gibbous moon, roughly three-quarters lit, will hang in the sky for much of the evening and wash out all but the brightest meteors.
The fix is timing. In Lynchburg, the moon sets at about 3:10 a.m. Thursday. That leaves a window of genuinely dark sky between moonset and the first light of dawn, which begins brightening the eastern sky around 5:30 a.m. Sunrise is just before 7 a.m.
Night owls who can’t make it out Thursday morning have options. The shower has a broad peak, so rates stay nearly as strong for several nights. In fact, the moon sets earlier on the nights leading up to the peak, at about 1:05 a.m. Tuesday and 2:10 a.m. Wednesday, which gives an even longer dark window. By Friday morning, moonset slides to about 4:10 a.m.
The shower stays active, at lower rates, through Nov. 7.
Find a spot away from porch lights, streetlights and headlights. A field, a pasture or a back road pull-off will do.
Give your eyes 20 to 30 minutes to adjust to the dark, and skip checking your phone. Even a quick glance resets your night vision.
You don’t need a telescope or binoculars. Lie back in a lawn chair or on a blanket and take in as much sky as you can. The meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Orion, which rises in the east late in the evening and sits high in the south before dawn, but they can show up anywhere overhead.
Dress warmly. Late-October nights in the Highland Rim can feel a lot colder at 4 a.m. than the afternoon forecast suggests.
Got a good photo of an Orionid over Moore County? Send it to The Lynchburg Times at editor@lynchburg-times.com.•
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