Look Up For One of the Best Fall Meteor Showers in CNY

Look up at the night sky for one of the best meteor showers of the fall season in Central New York.

The Orionids meteor shower will appear overnight from Wednesday, October 20 to Thursday, October 21 and it should be better than the Draconid meteors earlier this month. It's also your only chance to enjoy the famous Halley's Comet before it returns to our inner solar system in 2061, according to Accuweather.

Meteor showers occur when the Earth plows through a field of debris left behind by an asteroid or comet, and the parent comet for the Orionids is none other than Halley’s Comet.

The Orionids usually produce about 20 meteors per hour but a full Hunter's Moon could have an impact. Light from the moon will make it hard to see some of the dimmer shooting stars. You may only catch 5 to 10 per hour this year.

The best time to watch will be during the second half of the night. The best way to watch is to focus on the dark sky and avoid looking at the moon, your cell phone, or other sources of light.

Hopefully, Mother Nature will cooperate. There are a few clouds expected overnight in Central New York so you may catch even fewer shooting stars.

If you miss the Orionids overnight, there are several more meteor showers next month. The Southern Taurids meteor shower in the first week of November and the Northern Taurids during the second week of the month. Both are known for producing incredibly bright fireballs but only a few shooting stars.

The best of three will be the Leonids, which will peak November 17 and bring around 10 to 15 meteors per hour.

Stunning Photos Of Powerful Northern Lights In The Adirondacks

A solar storm hit Earth and brought with it a spectacular light show visible as far south as New York. In the Adirondacks, one photographer captured all of the magic.

Meet Patrick Bly. He's the man responsible for these amazing photos of the Northern Lights in the Adirondacks.

Northern Lights In Old Forge

It's not really common to see northern lights in Central New York, but photographer Kurt Gardner captured the beautiful conformation of them near Old Forge. We're usually too far south of the North Pole, but sometimes we get lucky.

Auroras are caused by the Sun. The Sun is not only hot and bright, but it's also full of energy and small particles that fall toward Earth. NASA says the protective magnetic field around Earth shields us from most of the energy and particles, and we don't even notice them.

The amount of energy the Sun sends, depends on the streaming solar wind and solar storms. During one kind of solar storm called a coronal mass ejection, the Sun expels a huge bubble of electrified gas that can travel through space at high speeds.

When a solar storm comes toward us, some of the energy and small particles can travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into Earth's atmosphere. There, the particles interact with gases in our atmosphere resulting in beautiful displays of light in the sky. Oxygen gives off green and red light. Nitrogen glows blue and purple. [NASA]

Source: Look Up For One of the Best Fall Meteor Showers in Central New York

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