Three Bright Meteors From Halley's Comet Recorded Over Georgia
Tim McCollum captured the streaks in Toccoa on October 21, three days before the Orionid shower reaches its peak activity.
By Pedro Barnes ·
Astrophotographer Tim McCollum recorded three distinct meteor trails above Toccoa, Georgia, in the early hours of October 21. The image documents the Orionid meteor shower, which is currently building toward its period of highest activity.
The glowing streaks are fragments of debris shed by Comet 1P/Halley. Although the comet itself remains more than 3 billion miles from Earth, the particles it left behind continue to intersect the planet's orbit, creating visible flashes in the atmosphere.
McCollum captured the meteors between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. on October 21. Each trail appears to radiate from a specific point in the sky near the red giant star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion. This radiant point marks the origin of the shower's meteors.
The image is a composite of multiple 30-second exposures taken with a Canon EOS Ra camera and an RF 28-70 f2.0 lens. A star tracker held the equipment steady on the radiant while the astrophotography software PixInsight merged the individual frames into a single photograph.
The background of the image features dense star fields and dust lanes from the Milky Way's galactic plane. The stars of Orion's Belt appear on the right side of the frame, adjacent to the Orion Nebula. The Rosette Nebula, known as Caldwell 49, is also visible within the composition.
The Orionid shower remains active through November 7. Observers have several more nights to view the display. Earth is also currently passing through debris streams from Comet 2P/Encke, which generates the Taurid meteor shower. This overlap occasionally produces bright fireballs during the Halloween period.
