Another October Meteor Shower Peaks This Week

October features two full moons, and two meteor showers.

Fall is an active season for meteor showers. It's also the last few meteor showers you can view without freezing to the bone. This month two meteor showers will light up the night sky over Maine. Technically, there's three light shows to catch this month.

The first October meteor shower peaked a couple weeks ago, the Draconid meteor shower. Now, the tail of Halley's Comet produces a quality light show. The Orionid meteor shower are some of the fastest and brightest meteors you'll see. Space.com predicts the peak overnight Oct. 20-21. The best viewing will be at 2 a.m., when you can see about 10-20 meteors per-hour.

The North Taurids meteor shower is a long lasting meteor shower, stretching from Oct. 12 to Dec. 2. The modest meteor shower peaks on Nov. 12, into early Nov. 13, with about five meteors per-hour. The best viewing is around midnight, when you may see slow-moving, but sometimes very bright meteors.

What will be a highlight of the 2020 lunar phases is a second full moon in October, making it a blue moon. A blue moon occur once every two or three years. What makes this year's blue moon rare is that it falls on Halloween night, October 31.

Astronomers predict the next Halloween blue moon to happen again in 2039.