Meteor showers tonight.
Orionid meteor showers.
After midnight.
Saturday, October 21, 2023
Complex astrological day today.
Sun in Libra (3), Capricorn (1, 3, 7) moon (4).
Venus (5) & Saturn (3) rules both Libra & Capricorn.
Sun square Pluto (1) – Libra/Capricorn. Directing us towards balance & harmony.
Venus trine Jupiter (2) – Virgo (2/6) / Taurus (4)- auspicious.
Mercury (4) enters Scorpio (4) tonight –
Our tongue (words) is (are) that of either a serpent or an eagle.
We make that conscious choice.

The Meteor Showers.
Find Orion – the three stars.
The Three Magi Kings.
The meteors emerge from the radiant (center).
To the left of Orion’s three stars.
Sirius can be seen, too, below Orion.
So many meteors on the 22nd!
10 – 20 meteors per hour.
Overall shower duration: September 26 to November 22.
Radiant: The radiant rises before midnight and is highest in the sky around 2 a.m.
These fast-moving meteors occasionally leave persistent trains. The Orionids sometimes produce bright fireballs.

The Orionid meteors that we observe come from Halley’s Comet. This comet orbits the sun every 76 years or so, and like steam coming from a locomotive, dust particles are expelled from the comet’s nucleus and are left behind in its path. We intercept this path in late October each year. The nucleus of the comet loses between 3 to 10 feet (1 to 3 meters) of material on each passage through the inner solar system. Measuring 5 by 9 miles (8 by 15 km) in size, it can handle eons of orbits around the sun.

The official name for Halley’s Comet is 1P/Halley. It was the first comet to have its return predicted, and Edmond Halley was the one who made that calculation. The comet typically gets bright enough to be easily visible with recorded observations since 240 CE. It is one of only a few comets named not after its discoverer but after the person who calculated its orbit.

Unlike most solar system objects, Halley’s Comet orbits the sun in a retrograde orbit, going around the sun in the opposite direction than we do. Its orbit is also tilted a bit to ours, and it spends most of its time below the plane of our path. Presently, it is at its farthest point from the sun, near the head of the constellation Hydra the Water Snake, too faint to be seen.

Our last days of Libra.
Scorpio Sun begins Monday.
Next Saturday is the lunar eclipse. 5 degrees Taurus/Scorpio.

love, Risa