Eta Aquariids

The 1986 apparition was poor from northern latitudes, and much better from the Southern Hemisphere.

Halley's dust gives us the Eta Aquariids every May, a decidedly southern shower.

And Edmond Halley made his name by sailing to St. Helena at 20 to catalog the southern stars no European had properly charted.

He was a southern sky observer before he was a comet man.

Well, what's kinda cool is the most famous comet of all, Comet Halley, is actually responsible for one of the minor showers.

The Eta Aquarids, which are visible primarily in the Southern Hemisphere, are caused by Comet Halley.

The Earth actually passed through Halley's tail in 1910 while Halley was in the inner part of the solar system.

This caused widespread panic, chaos, mass, um, buying of gas masks.

Yep.

Then in late April, around April 22nd or so, we have the Lyrids.

In May, we have the Eta Aquarids, which are the ones that are caused by Halley's Comet.

And then, uh, as we were talking about, we have the Perseids in August and then the not-quite-so-well-known Orionids in late October.

They are a herald of the meteor-rich months ahead, a promise that the sky will soon be filled with falling stars.

The Eta Aquarids and Orionids, Halley's children, two meteor showers occurring six months apart, share a common parent.

Both the Eta Aquarids in May and the Orionids in October originate from debris left by Halley's Comet, the most famous comet in history.

As Halley orbits the sun every seventy-six years, it sheds material continuously, creating two distinct streams that Earth encounters at different points in our orbit.

The Eta Aquarids peak around May fifth or sixth, producing about thirty to forty meteors per hour for observers in the Southern Hemisphere, and somewhat fewer in the Northern Hemisphere.

The radiant lies near the star Eta Aquarii in the constellation Aquarius, which rises in the pre-dawn hours during early May.

The Orionids peak around October twenty-first with similar rates.

Halley's Comet has been observed for more than two thousand years, with records going back to ancient China, Babylon, and Greece.