Four meteor showers are about to peak in less than one month’s time, a celestial series that will kick off before the end of the week thanks to one of the most famous objects in the solar system.
The Orionid meteor shower peaks on the night of Thursday, Oct. 20, into the early morning of Friday, Nov. 21, as the Earth encounters a field of debris left behind by Halley’s Comet. The famous comet will not return to the inner solar system until 2061, but its previous orbits around the sun left behind a trail of cosmic dust and debris that will burn up in sensational fashion when colliding with Earth’s atmosphere this week.
