Orionid meteor shower peaks Saturday with up to 23 meteors per hour

Saturday night into Sunday morning, if you step outside and look up, you might catch one of the year's most reliable celestial shows. The Orionids are coming—a meteor shower that NASA ranks among the finest the sky has to offer, and this weekend is when they'll be most visible.

These meteors are fragments of Halley's Comet, broken pieces that scatter into Earth's path every October. They move with startling speed, roughly 148,000 miles per hour as they enter the atmosphere. What makes them worth losing sleep over is the way they move: fast enough to leave glowing trails of debris in their wake, incandescent streaks that linger for seconds or even minutes against the dark. At peak, you could see as many as 23 in an hour, though the actual count depends on where you are and how dark your sky is.

The shower gets its name from the constellation Orion, specifically from the direction of Betelgeuse, the constellation's brightest star. That's the radiant point—the place in the sky where the meteors appear to originate. But here's the counterintuitive part: you shouldn't stare directly at it. Looking 45 to 90 degrees away from Betelgeuse actually gives you the better view. Stare straight at the radiant and the meteors appear short and compressed, a trick of perspective called foreshortening. Step to the side and they stretch out, longer and more dramatic.

NASA's advice for watching is straightforward but requires some planning. Find somewhere dark—away from city lights and street lamps. Bring a blanket or sleeping bag and lie on your back. If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, point your feet toward the southeast and look up. Give your eyes about thirty minutes to adjust to the darkness, and then wait. The show runs until dawn, so there's no rush. Patience is the only real requirement.

Weather will make or break the experience depending on where you live. New York will have roughly 15 percent cloud cover Saturday night, which is manageable. Miami is even better at 4 percent. Los Angeles and Atlanta should have essentially clear skies. But if you're in Houston, Chicago, Seattle, or Bangor, Maine, clouds will likely block most or all of the view. It's worth checking a local forecast before you commit to staying up.

This isn't the only celestial event of the season—last weekend brought the annular solar eclipse, and August had the Perseid meteor shower, which NASA called the year's best. The Orionids will remain active through the week of Thanksgiving, though they'll fade in intensity after this weekend. As for Halley's Comet itself, the parent body that spawned these fragments, it won't return to Earth's vicinity until 2061. For now, the debris is what we get, and it's worth the trip outside.