Look Up! Spectacular Orionid Meteor Shower Peaks This Weekend

DETROIT (WWJ) - There will be something special to see in the night sky this weekend.

Scientists say one of the best meteor showers of the season will peak late Friday night — with over a dozen meteors streaking across the sky every hour.

Mike Narlock, Head of Astronomy at Cranbrook Institute of Science, explains the annual Orionids meteor shower is made up of by debris left behind by Haley's Comet, burning up in Earth's atmosphere.

Narlock said seeing it in the metro Detroit area should be fairly simple. You don't even need a telescope.

"You basically want to go out where it's as dark as you're comfortable with and look up — because they'll be streaking right across the sky," Narklock said.

He said the shower is expected to produce somewhere between 10 and 20 meteors per hour.

"...See if you can find probably the most well-known constellation in the sky, and that's Orion the hunter, the namesake of this particual meteor shower," Narklock said. "All of the meteors will appear to come from that general part of the sky."

According to EarthSky.org, the best time to watch is between midnight Friday and before dawn on Saturday, though if you watch between midnight and dawn on either Saturday or Sunday, you should be in for a good show.

Meteorologists say the eastern U.S. will have the best weather for viewing the shower with a large dome of high pressure promoting clear skies across the region. With clear skies in the forecast here in metro Detroit, we should be in luck.