Shooting Stars This October, No Eclipse Glasses Needed

October is ripe for shooting stars. This Sunday, there’s the Draconid, and then a little later, the main event: the Orionid meteor shower.

Meteor showers show snapshots of the past. As comets course through the sky, they burn up, shedding bits of debris.

Those bits burn up as they fall to earth, producing the streaks of light we know as shooting stars.

According to NASA, the Draconid meteor shower comes from the comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner.

The Draconids, so called because they appear around the constellation Draco the Dragon, are expected to peak this Sunday, October 8.

The Draconid meteor shower normally only provides 10 to 20 meteors per hour at its peak, but this year meteorologists predict that as many as 600 per hour will fall through the sky towards earth.

UCJ, UNILORIN.