Heads Up: Meteors From Halley's Comet to Light Up the Skies this Weekend

Earth is approaching a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, source of the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower. If forecasters are correct, the shower will peak on the nights of May 6th through 7th with as many as 40 meteors per hour. The Eta Aquarids are best viewed from the southern hemisphere, but there's something special about them no matter where you live: "Each Eta Aquarid meteoroid is a piece of Halley's Comet doing a kamikaze death dive into the atmosphere. The best time to look is during the hours before sunrise when the constellation Aquarius is high in the southeastern sky. Nominally, May 6th will be the most active morning, but May 5th and May 7th should be good, too. Halley's stream of debris is wide and spreads the display over three full days. Although Halley's meteors shoot out of Aquarius, they fly far across the sky. All you have to do is lie down under a dark clear sky and look up. The shower be obvious even without the guidance of a star chart. The naked eye is usually best for seeing meteors which often streak more than 45 degrees across sky. The field of view of most binoculars and telescopes is simply too narrow for good meteor observations. Halley's Comet orbits the sun once every 76 years. Although the Comet is deep in the outer solar system at the moment and won't return to Earth until 2061, it treats us to a meteor shower twice a year as our planet passes by the debris cloud. In May we have the Eta Aquarids, and in October the Orionids. Clear Skies Everyone!