The Orionid meteor shower today is something worth staying up for, peaking at the night of October 20-21. NASA is holding a live web chat between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. ET as well as a live stream video feed.
The best time to look is before sunrise on Sunday October 21. According to NASA's Chat page, "Wake up a few hours before dawn, go outside and look up. No telescope is required to see Orionids shooting across the sky."
Read also: Meteor Shower Viewing Tips, Conditions, Guide to Watch and Take Photos
The moon will be absent tonight at pre-dawn, allowing for more visibility of the meteor shower.
Orionids appear annually around this time when earth orbits through the debris of Halley's comet. One can see approximately 20 meteors per hour.
"Earth is passing through a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, the source of the Orionids," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Flakes of comet dust hitting the atmosphere should give us dozens of meteors per hour."
