A meteor shower made up of debris from the famed Halley's Comet will peak overnight tonight, with a live telecast available online, Space.com reported.
With NASA and the online Slooh community telescope offering live views of the "shooting stars" display, the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower will peak late tonight and before dawn on Tuesday (May 5 and 6).
Up to 30 meteors' per hour may be visible to observers in the Northern Hemisphere, with 60 meteors an hour possible in the Southern Hemisphere, scientists at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center said.
The Eta Aquarids will appear to radiate out of the constellation Aquarius in the eastern sky for northern observers. However, city lights are vital to get the best view of the meteor shower, according to Space.com.
Beginning at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 May 6 GMT), the Slooh meteor shower will feature audio commentary from astronomer Bob Berman.
"What makes this shower somewhat special is that the meteors stem from the most famous comet in all of history, Comet Halley," Berman said in a statement. "As Halley goes around the sun in its 76-year orbit, pieces of it, little chunks of ice, slough off the comet and we intersect that every year around this time, in early May."
According to Space.com, NASA's Eta Aquarid meteor shower webcast will begin at nightfall and include live views from all-sky cameras at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "Currently skies are predicted to be clear over Huntsville that evening," Marshall officials wrote in an advisory.
Due to the absence of a bright moon, this year's Eta Aquarids will get a boost, NASA meteor scientist Bill Cooke, who heads the Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall center, said.
"The moon will be waxing crescent so there will be not much interference for early morning meteor observers," Cooke told Space.com in an email. "2014-2016 appears to be at the minimum, so I would not expect the [zenith hourly rate] on the peak night to be much above 40 per hour (maximum on a "good" year is over 80 per hour). However, we can always be surprised, and the good news is that the Eta Aquarid shower has a broad maximum, with the rates above 20 for a few days before/after the peak night."
You can watch the meteor shower webcasts on Space.com. You can also follow the Slooh webcast live directly at the Slooh website here, or via the Slooh iPad app.
