Shooting stars in October: The Orionids can be seen all over Germany until the beginning of November.
Read here how you can best watch the spectacle and what it's all about.
Munich - Anyone looking up at the sky on October nights is likely to make a wish: You can watch the Orionids until the beginning of November.
They reach their peak on the night of October 21st to 22nd.
We answer all questions about the shooting star night.
Shooting stars in October 2021: when and where can you see the Orionids?
Every year the Orionids are active in October and the first week of November.
You can see the shooting stars in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the rest of Europe.
The spectacle is easy to observe - the Orionids' shooting stars are one of the five most active meteor streams of the year.
The best time to see the shooting stars is just before dawn.
If the weather is not good on the night of October 21st to 22nd, you have many other opportunities: You can observe the Orionids from October 2nd to November 7th.
The rate of how many shooting stars you can see per hour is extremely fluctuating.
Shooting stars 2021: how to see the spectacle
The good news: You don't need any prior meteorological knowledge or special equipment. A clear sky is enough to see the heavenly spectacle. The best way to spot the falling stars is to take a little time. After about a quarter of an hour in a dark or poorly lit place, the eyes have got used to the light conditions.
The reason for the shooting stars nights is Halley's Comet. Its fragments burn up in the atmosphere as shooting stars at this time of year. This process reaches its optical climax around the same time every year - on October 20th and 21st respectively. According to meteorologists, one can spot between 20 and 25 falling stars in an hour that night. However, this number could fluctuate. Science doesn't quite agree on that.
Comets leave a trail of dust. If the earth moves in its orbit around the sun in a region where such comet fragments are, one can see them from earth. They are fast and draw a bright trail across the night sky - we know that as shooting stars. Because the earth orbits the sun in the same orbit over and over again, some of them can be seen every year, like the Orionids. The tiny particles of Halley's comet, weighing only a few milligrams, create a bright tracer in the atmosphere because of their high speed. They have almost parallel orbits on which they move, which is due to the comet's trajectory. They reach just over 60 kilometers per second and can be seen with the naked eye for about half a second.Its origin lies north of Orion - for example, near the bright star Betelgeuse, a red giant. According to the space agency NASA, the constellation is in a south-easterly direction.
The Orionids are named after the constellation Orion, which can be seen in the winter sky. It has two stars of the so-called first magnitude and three of the second magnitude. These form the Orion Belt. The striking shape of Orion meant that the constellation was assigned very different meanings over the millennia. The Sumerians, who lived in the third millennium BC, saw it as a sheep. The Egyptians were in awe of Orion: they thought he was a reflection of Osiris, the god of death and fertility. Orion got its current name in ancient Greece. They named the star figure after the god "Orion", who is a huge hunter.
Another theory assumes that the constellation was called this or at least similarly earlier and that the Greeks simply adopted this name.
In Northern Europe, among other things with the Germanic tribes, not much mythological was ascribed to the constellation.
Here the constellation was thought to be everyday things like a scythe or a plow because of the significant three belt stars.
Other interpretations saw three fishermen in the constellation.
A special feature: because Orion is at the celestial equator, the constellation can be seen all over the globe.
In addition to the Orionids, there are many streams of falling stars that can be observed every year.
The Quadrantids light up in January, the Lyrids in April, the Perseids in August, the Leonids in November and the Geminids in December.
