During these next several days, if you happen to be outside prior to the break of dawn and are looking up and glimpse a "shooting star," there's a good chance that what you saw was a fragment left behind in space by the famous Halley's Comet.
For it is during the third week of October that the meteor display spawned by the debris shed by Halley reaches its peak: the Orionid meteor shower.
If the December Geminids and August Perseids can be considered ranking as the "first string" among the annual meteor showers in terms of brightness and reliability, then the Orionid meteor shower is on the junior varsity team.
This year they are scheduled to reach their maximum before sunrise on Sunday morning (Oct. 22). Orion, of course, is a winter constellation.
At this moment, in early autumn, it appears ahead of us in our path around the sun, and as such has not completely risen above the eastern horizon until after 11 p.m. local daylight time. Several hours later, between 4 and 5 a.m., Orion will be high in the sky toward the south-southeast.
And this will be a very good year to look for these shooting stars, since the moon will be at first quarter (half) phase and will set at around 11:30 p.m. local daylight time on Saturday night, Oct. 21 and will not pose any hindrance at all for those watching for Orionids during their prime predawn viewing hours.
But to see the greatest number of meteors, don't look in the direction of the radiant, but rather about 30 degrees from it, in the direction of the point directly overhead (the zenith).
Your clenched fist held at arm's length is roughly equivalent to 10-degrees, so looking "three fists" up from Betelgeuse, the star that forms Orion's left shoulder, will be where to concentrate your view.