Comment: News Flash: Meteor Shower Peaks! This Weekend Halley's Comet!

See fantastic time lapse photograph of meteor shower in progress.
[This news flash was published in National Geographic Daily News October 20, 2012]

A truly marvelous time lapsed photograph of a sky filled with shooting stars. Mount Shasta waterfall in the foreground.

Honorable mention: Halley's Comet!

See Halley's Comet. Sky-watchers should be on the lookout for Orionid fireballs before dawn Sunday. Orionids Are Reminders of Distant Comet

Just like all other meteor showers, the Orionids gets its name from the constellation from which its shooting stars appear to radiate—what astronomers call the shower's radiant.

In this case observers can trace back the streaks of light to the area in the sky occupied by the mythical hunter Orion—all radiating out from a spot just above its bright orange star Betelgeuse.

The Orionid shower is caused when Earth slams into a debris field left behind by Halley's comet, which won't return to our neck of the woods for another five decades. (Find out why Halley's comet has been hailed as an omen of doom.)