How to watch in California this year

Stargazers in the Bay Area will want to mark their calendars this week for a brilliant sky show associated with the famous Halley’s Comet.

The event, the annual Orionid meteor shower, will peak in the early hours of Friday, October 21. If the weather conditions are right and you’re willing to stay up very late (or get up very early), you’ll have a good chance of spotting some meteors zooming by.

The Orionids, so named because they appear to fall out of the mace of the Orion constellation, are the result of the dust trail left by the famous Halley’s Comet, which last passed through our area of ​​the solar system in 1986 and won’t return until 2061, it said Ben Burress, staff astronomer at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland.

Earth crosses the orbit of the giant comet – which NASA says measures 9.6 miles by 5 miles – twice a year, and the crossing with its debris trail creates two meteor showers: the Eta Aquarids in May and the Orionids in mid to late October.

The debris from the comet hit our atmosphere at about 40 miles per second, according to Farmer’s Almanac, instantly turning it white.

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