Tonight, Vietnam welcomes the maximum 'treasure meteor shower'

According to Time and Date, the positioning results in Ho Chi Minh City show that the peak night of the Orionids meteor shower shining in the sky will fall on the evening of October 21 and early morning of October 22, Vietnam time.

This is the second meteor shower of the year originating from the famous Halley's comet, following the Eta Aquarids meteor shower in May.

Orionids meteor shower. (Photo: SPACE.COM)

With a 76-year cycle, Halley will not pass close to Earth again until 2015, but each year our planet passes through its dusty tail twice, causing two meteor showers.

Although all meteors are meteorites from Halley's tail that burn up in Earth's atmosphere, meteor showers are named after the constellations where they originate.

With the Orionids, it will appear to radiate from the constellation Orion, the hunter-shaped constellation.

Let your eyes adjust to the darkness for about 15-20 minutes, choose an open area - and pray for good weather - and you will see the meteor shower emanating from the Orion hunter's arm, located near the constellation Gemini (the twin brothers).

A map of the constellations with the point where the Orionids meteor shower appears marked. (Photo: EARTHSKY)

According to calculations, this year's Orionids meteor shower will be quite small, with about 20 meteors falling per hour during its peak night.

Called the "treasure meteor shower" because the "twin" version of this Orionids meteor shower - Eta Aquarids - helped a family in New Jersey - USA "win the lottery" big in May this year.

A large meteorite fell right in the middle of their house, which was fortunately an unoccupied bedroom. Although they had to repair the roof, they had found a veritable cosmic treasure, as the meteorite was believed by scientists to be a meteorite from the Eta Aquarids meteor shower, a fragment of Halley's comet.

Halley has long been considered one of the most primitive objects in the solar system. It may be around 4.6 billion years old, or somewhere between 4 and 5 billion years old, as it is difficult to determine exactly how old it is.

Therefore, studying Halley's material as well as asteroids and comets of its age can help discover the early composition of the star system, the precursor elements that helped create planets including Earth, and even life on them.

To obtain about 250g of such material, NASA just spent 1 billion USD on the ORISIR-REx mission to bring dust from an asteroid "contemporary" with Halley back to Earth.

The Eta Aquarids meteorite from May is still being analyzed, but if it is uncontaminated and determined to be from Halley's comet, it will be an unparalleled treasure.

And if extremely lucky, someone has the chance to pick up a similar treasure from the Orionids.

(Source: Lao Dong Newspaper)

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