Thumb Barn Milky Way & Meteor by Charles Bonham

While the dates of meteor showers are more or less evergreen, I like to update the posts because the effect of the moon can be very different! In addition to being the season of cider, changing leaves, and Halloween, October also comes with two meteor showers. Our friends at EarthSky give you all you need to know to see the Draconid & Orionid meteor showers:

The Draconids, October 6-10 / peak October 8

The best time to watch the Draconid Meteor Shower is as darkness falls on the evening of October 8 through the wee hours of the morning on October 9. There’s a new moon on October 10 so the sliver of crescent moon won’t interfere with watching for Draconid meteors this year. The Draconid shower is a real oddity, in that the radiant point stands highest in the sky as darkness falls (great for the early to bed crowd!). That means that, unlike many meteor showers, more Draconids are likely to fly in the evening hours than in the morning hours after midnight. This shower is usually a sleeper, producing only a handful of languid meteors per hour in most years. But watch out if the Dragon awakes! In rare instances, fiery Draco has been known to spew forth many hundreds of meteors in a single hour.

The Orionids, September 26 – November 22 / peak October 21st

The predicted peak for the Orionid meteor shower is on October 21, 2026 but the Orionids are known to have a broad, plateau-like maximum lasting several nights. So several mornings around October 21 would potentially show you some meteors. Note that you’ll be competing with a bright, waxing moon — up for most of the night. It’ll be encroaching on your sky darkness more with each passing day. Full moon falls on the night of October 25-26. Still, don’t let that bright moon in early evening fool you! You will have a dark window before dawn for watching the Orionids around the peak mornings. They are known as the Orionids because they appear to radiate from the Club of the well-known constellation Orion the Hunter.

Charles shares that he found a Draconid meteor in this photo of a barn in Pinnebog from October 2024 after reviewing many different frames. You can see it right next to the left side of barn roof along with a hint of Northern Lights on the right side! Follow Charles on Flickr for his latest and see more in his Barns gallery on Flickr including some truly spectacular ones of this barn under the aurora!