Astrology

Astrophotographer captures Halley's Comet debris lighting up Orionid meteor shower over Georgia

Astrophotographer Tim McCollum captured a trio of vivid Orionid meteors streaking above Toccoa, Georgia, between 3 and 4 a.m. on October 21, as the annual shower produced by debris from Halley's Comet ramped up toward peak activity, SSBCrack and Space.com report.

The comet itself sat more than 3 billion miles from Earth at the time, but the particles it has shed over its many orbits still carved a path through the autumn sky, according to Space.com.

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How McCollum built the composite image#

McCollum photographed the meteors using multiple 30-second exposures taken with a Canon EOS Ra camera and an RF 28-70 f2.0 lens, keeping the frame fixed on the shower's radiant, the point the meteors appear to stream from, with the help of a star tracker, Space.com and SSBCrack report. He then combined the individual exposures into one composite image using the astrophotography software PixInsight, according to both outlets.

The radiant sits near the red giant star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion, and the resulting picture also shows the stars of Orion's Belt, the nearby Orion Nebula, a major stellar nursery close to Earth, and the Rosette Nebula, cataloged as Caldwell 49, set within the dust lanes of the Milky Way's galactic plane, Space.com and SSBCrack report.

Halley's debris and the shower's peak week#

The Orionid shower is one of two annual meteor showers tied to Halley's Comet, formally designated 1P/Halley, which passes through the inner solar system roughly every 74 to 79 years and last appeared in 1986, with its next appearance due in mid-2061, according to Wikipedia.

The shower remains active until November 7, and Udaipur Kiran reports that its meteors enter Earth's atmosphere at around 41 miles per second, with some meteors producing trails of glowing light that linger briefly afterward. Jessica Maxon-Berrier, a director at the Bishop Museum of Science and Nature, told the outlet, "It's magical to see something that happened centuries ago and witness the same phenomenon tonight."

The Business Standard reported the shower was expected to peak from the night of October 21 into the morning of October 22, citing the American Meteor Society's estimate of roughly 20 meteors per hour in ideal conditions, though a bright moon threatened to limit visibility until it set late at night.

Best viewing conditions after midnight#

Experts cited by Udaipur Kiran recommended seeking dark locations away from city lights, with the optimal viewing window typically falling between midnight and 2 a.m. under clear skies. The Business Standard likewise reported that the hours after midnight and before dawn generally offer the most favorable conditions.

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