Orionid meteor bathe: how stargazers can get the most effective views in Australia | Astronomy

What is the Orionid meteor bathe?

Jonti Horner, a professor of astrophysics on the University of Southern Queensland, says the Orionids are the results of the mud and particles left behind by Halley’s comet.

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“This dust and debris is spread out a bit in space and it means that essentially there is this giant tube of dust through the solar system and it’s pretty wide now and it takes the Earth about a month to pass through it,” Horner says.

“When the Earth reaches that location in our orbit, we will run into this dust and so we’ll get the meteor shower. And that’s what makes it an annual meteor shower.”

When are you able to see it in Australia?

If you need to catch a glimpse of the Orionids, you’ll must set an alarm to be sure to’re up within the early hours.

For folks within the Brisbane space, the radiant for the Orionids isn’t rising till about 10.30pm at evening.

In Sydney, the Orionids bathe is not showing excessive within the sky till near midnight, Horner says

He says the Orionids’ radiant can be at its highest within the sky for about half-hour, from roughly 4-4.30am (AEDT).

But the most effective likelihood of viewing it’s about an hour earlier than and after it’s at its highest level.

“If I was getting up for them … I would look at setting my alarm for maybe 2.30am [3.30am AEDT] and watching through until about 4.30am [5.30am],” Horner says.

“This is when I would be looking to get the best view.”

Why do meteor showers occur?

Horner says a meteor is just a little bit of mud and particles crashing into the Earth’s ambiance, at a velocity between 12km and 72km a second.

“When you see a shooting star, you’re seeing something smaller than a grain of rice typically hitting the Earth’s atmosphere at a very high speed and burning powerfully way overhead,” Horner says.

What else can stargazers stay up for?

A much bigger occasion is the Geminid meteor bathe, which can peak on the evening of 14 December.

“The Geminids are the best meteor shower of the year by far – and that’s worldwide,” Horner says. “They are slightly better for the northern hemisphere than the southern hemisphere, but they are much better than the Orionids.

“They are also at their best around 2am-3am local time but depending on where you are in the country, you can start seeing them a bit earlier in the evening.”