October 17, 2010 - Hello Halley
Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

Halley’s Comet last visited us 24 years ago. It left behind a trail of debris that Earth passes through each October. When that comet dust enters our atmosphere it heats up and glows, producing meteors. Halley’s debris brings us an annual meteor shower. Earth begins entering this dust trail on October 4th and leaves it behind on November 14th. This is the time period when we can see the Orionid meteor shower. It is called that because the meteors appear to radiate from a point in the sky in the constellation Orion. Look to the east after midnight for a chance to see the meteors. The peak of the shower is predicted to be the night of October 21st through the early morning of the 22nd. That is when chances are good to see up to 23 meteors per hour.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.