Remember Halley’s Comet? One of the most famous celestial visitors to the solar system in recent decades, 1P/Halley—as it’s officially known—gets close to the Sun every 75 years. It was last seen in 1986 and won’t be with us again until 2061, and yet every year our planet busts through its icy remains in space. 

The result, of course, is a possible sighting of “shooting stars”—bits and pieces leftover from Halley’s Comet impacting with Earth’s atmosphere. 

“The Eta-Aquariids is a fun meteor shower because many people know and relate to Halley’s Comet—I was very little kid, the last time that Halley’s Comet came through and I remember what a big deal it was for my parents and I. Everyone got so excited about it,” said Dr. Jackie Faherty, Senior Scientist and Senior Education Manager jointly in the Department of Astrophysics and the Department of Education at the American Museum of Natural History. “The Eta-Aquariids is a reminder that every year we pass through the the leftover debris from when Halley’s Comet has been here in the past”.  

This week’s Eta-Aquariid meteor shower is predicted to peak in the early hours of Tuesday, May 5, 2020. It actually began on April 19, 2020 and will last until May 31, 2020 producing an estimated 60 meteors an hour (though that number is usually reserved for observers on the equator and in the southern hemisphere). “The Eta-Aquariids starts when we hit the dust cloud—the tale of Halley’s Comet—around mid-April, but you really want to catch it as its peak,” said Faherty.

However, dark skies are essential to see all but the brightest of shooting stars during any meteor shower, and as (bad) luck would have it there’s a full Moon—a “Super Flower Moon,” no less—coming on Thursday, May 7, 2020. 

In fact, Tuesday—when the Eta-Aquariid meteor shower peaks—sees the moon at perigee much later that day, its closest to the Earth for this orbit. That means a bright supermoon. 

All full Moons have a habit of brightening the night sky and bleaching it enough to rub-out shooting stars, though it should still be possible to see some of the bright Eta-Aquariids. 

“Meteor showers get ranked by how many meteors or “shooting stars” you’re going to see per hour—you really want one that produces 60 to 70,” said Faherty. “We call them ‘shooting stars’ when we’re being cute around children, but they’re really just specks of dust that are burning up in the atmosphere.” 

Halley’s Comet actually left two prominent dust clouds that have a set orbit; as well as causing the Eta-Aquariids, November’s Orionids meteors shower is also a result of Halley’s Comet. “It’s is a nice large comet that left a lot of debris in different spots of the Earth’s orbit, and as it’s going around the Sun we intersect it,” said Faherty. 

So go outside after midnight on Monday, May 4, 2020 and into the early hours of Tuesday, May 5, 2020, and look—and keep looking. Get yourself away from any lights in your peripheral vision and you just might see a bright fireball or two from your childhood or younger years. 

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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