Orionids Meteor Shower sends 'spectacular fireballs' through the night sky

Videos of a meteor shower seen across southwestern Ontario have been popping up across social media since Monday night.

Moon Newhook is one of the people who happened to get some video of the shower. She was driving on Block Line Road going home from the Region of Waterloo International Airport just before 7 p.m. Monday night, when she heard something out the window.

“What sounded like a jet engine, a very small jet engine. That's what alerted me to just look up and scan," Newhook said. "It was really big to the point that I was just like, “Wow, what is that?'"

Newhook said what looked like a green fireball was streaking across the sky.

"As it passed through, I can hear the sizzling fading down. And it was just a cool experience to see," Newhook said.

Video still of a meteor crossing the southern Ontario sky on Oct. 21, 2024. (Courtesy: Brad Hague)

At first, Newhook wasn’t sure what it was.

“I was in just shock. I don’t know what it was. I don't know if it was the flare gun, if it was a UFO. I wasn't sure what it was until I actually went home,” Newhook said.

Thinking it might be a meteor, Newhook rushed home to check her dashcam footage.

"It literally felt like it was right in front of my face. The video that I took that did not do justice to what I actually saw in person," Newhook said.

Videos of the meteor shower have been seen across southern Ontario, in places like Kitchener, Toronto and Port Burwell. Western University astronomers said it could even have been seen in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

"It was really visible, because it occurred when the sun was still not too far below the horizon. So the actual fireball was lit by the sun and that helped visibility and it entered at a pretty shallow angle," Peter Brown, Faculty of Science at Western University said.

Orionid Meteor Shower

The meteor shower Newhook saw is known as Orionids Meteor Shower. It is one of about a dozen meteor showers that are easy to see each year.

"We've got wonderful weather. This is like the best weather we've had for Orionid viewing in a while. It's not going to be that cold," Mich Fich, Professor Emeritus, Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo said.

Meteor spotted above southern Ontario on Oct. 21, 2024. (Courtesy: Randy Ryder)

The Orionids are broken off pieces of Halley’s Comet. Fich said it’s special, because Halley’s Comet goes the opposite way around the sun than almost everything else in the solar system.

"But this one is spectacular because it has really, really bright meteors. Not a lot of them, but really bright, like fireballs in the sky," Fich said. "Almost all of the times when we run into comet material, meteor showers, we're catching up to rocks. But for this particular meteor shower, it's like a head on collision. We're going the opposite way. So you get really spectacular fireballs in the sky.”

Fich said the shower started about two weeks ago, reaching its peak on this past Sunday night, but it will last for a couple more days.

He said meteors can be seen in the evening, but the best time is midnight to sunrise. At the best times you can see about 20 meteors in an hour, and don’t look towards the moon.

"Because your eyes will be adjusted to the brightness of the moon. So they won't be able to see the faint things," Fich said.