The November Orionids meteor shower
Key facts
- Peak
- around 28 November
- Active
- mid-November to early December
- Rate at peak (ZHR)
- about 3
- Speed
- 44 km/s
- Radiant
- Orion (north of Betelgeuse, near the border with Gemini and Taurus)
- Parent body
- Unknown; possibly a long-period comet that has broken up
Dates shift slightly from year to year. This year's peak is in the events calendar, and the meteor-shower planner shows how high the radiant climbs from where you live, night by night.
The November Orionids are a quiet late-autumn shower that was recognised only in the twenty-first century, from the orbits measured by video camera networks.
Recognition. When large networks of cameras in Japan and the United States began measuring the orbits of tens of thousands of meteors each year, a cluster of meteors from northern Orion in late November stood out. They were moving at medium speed on similar orbits. The shower was added to the international list and is now on the working list of visual showers, with a peak around 28 November.
Not the October Orionids. The famous Orionids of October come from Halley's Comet and enter the atmosphere at about 66 kilometres per second, from a radiant just north of Betelgeuse. The November Orionids come from almost the same part of the sky a month later but are a completely separate stream, arriving at about 44 kilometres per second. Their parent is unknown. Their orbits suggest a long-period comet, possibly one that has disintegrated.
What to expect. Around three meteors an hour, of medium speed. In late November the sky also holds the last of the Taurids and Leonids and, in the first days of December, early Geminids, so careful attention to direction and speed is needed.
Viewing from the UK. Orion rises in the evening and is high in the south around midnight, so the radiant is well placed for much of the night. Late November nights are long, though often cold and damp.
Viewing worldwide. The radiant is just north of the celestial equator, so the shower is visible from both hemispheres. Southern observers see Orion upside down, high in the north around midnight.
Viewing tips
- Watch around midnight, when Orion is high in the south.
- Find Betelgeuse and look north of it towards the border with Gemini.
- Expect medium-speed meteors: slower than the October Orionids.
- Separate them from slow Taurids, which come from further west.
- Wrap up warmly for a long, cold November night.
Read about the parent: Comet Mellish, and the other comets behind meteor showers.