Halley’s Comet will not swing past Earth again until 2061. But pieces of it are burning up over the United States right now — and you still have time to see them.
The Orionid meteor shower, made entirely of dust and grit shed by Halley’s Comet, peaked on the night of October 21–22. The good news for anyone who missed it, slept through it, or was clouded out: the Orionids are a broad, forgiving shower. NASA lists them as active from October 2 through November 7, and the mornings immediately after the peak still deliver worthwhile numbers of bright, fast meteors. The window has not closed. It has simply become a test of timing.
Why this year’s Orionids are an early-morning shower
Every Orionid is a tiny fragment of Halley — most no bigger than a grain of sand — slamming into the atmosphere at about 41 miles (66 kilometres) per second. That extreme speed is what makes the shower special. Orionids are among the brightest and fastest annual meteors, often leaving glowing trains that linger for seconds, and occasionally flaring into fireballs.
The problem in 2026 is not the shower. It is the Moon. A bright waxing gibbous Moon, roughly 80 percent lit around the peak, washes out fainter meteors for most of the night. The trick — at the peak and on the mornings that follow — is to wait for the Moon to get out of the way. It sets in the small hours, and between moonset and the first light of dawn the sky turns properly dark. That short, quiet stretch is when the Orionids show themselves.
As the nights pass after the peak, the geometry shifts: moonset comes later, so the dark window shrinks. That is why the next morning or two are your best remaining chances, rather than next week.
Your US viewing plan
You do not need a telescope, binoculars, or an app subscription. You need darkness, patience, and an alarm clock.
Watch after moonset, before dawn. Check your local moonset time for your city, then plan to be outside from roughly moonset until sunrise twilight begins. Across much of the US on the mornings around the peak, that has meant a window opening somewhere around 3 a.m. local time and running until about 5:30–5:45 a.m.
Get away from city light. A dark field, a quiet lakeshore, a desert pull-off — anywhere away from streetlights will multiply what you see. Under genuinely dark skies at the peak, observers could expect roughly 10 to 20 meteors an hour. Expect fewer now that the peak has passed, and fewer still from suburbs — but the meteors that do appear tend to be the bright ones, because the faint ones are the first to disappear.
Lie back and look wide. NASA’s advice is simple: lie flat on your back with your feet facing southeast, and take in as much sky as possible. The meteors appear to radiate from a point in Orion, just north of the bright star Betelgeuse — but do not stare at Orion. Meteors can appear anywhere, and those far from the radiant draw the longest trails.
Give your eyes 30 minutes. It takes up to half an hour in darkness for your eyes to fully adapt. Put the phone away — one glance at a bright screen restarts the clock.
A comet you can watch without waiting until 2061
There is something quietly wonderful about the Orionids. Halley has been shedding this dust trail for thousands of years, and Earth ploughs through it every October (and again in May, producing the Eta Aquariid shower). Each streak is sunlight-era history ending in a second of light over your backyard.
So if the skies are clear, set the alarm. The comet itself is decades away — its dust is here this week.