SAVANNAH, Ga. () – If you’ve been casting your eyes skyward recently, you might have been treated to more shooting stars than usual. This celestial spectacle is thanks to three active meteor showers, with one of them reaching its peak just last Wednesday!

Meteor showers occur when Earth travels through streams of debris left behind by ancient comets and asteroids. As our planet makes its yearly journey around the Sun, it encounters these trails of dust. When these tiny fragments enter Earth’s atmosphere, they ignite and streak across the sky as meteors. Typically, meteor showers are named after the constellation from which they seem to originate.

Currently, there are three meteor showers lighting up the night sky:

The Orionids Meteor Shower

Running until November 12, the Orionids reached their peak last Wednesday night, offering stargazers a breathtaking display of 50 to 75 meteors per hour under the cover of a new moon. Although the peak has passed, this remains one of the year’s more robust showers, and you can still catch sight of meteors through the middle of November.

The Southern Taurids Meteor Shower

This one is active until November 20 and will peak next Wednesday night. It’s a weaker shower, producing around 10 meteors per hour at its best. However, viewing may be tricky since a full moon will brighten the sky, making fainter meteors harder to see.

The Northern Taurids Meteor Shower

Also active now, this shower runs until December 10 and will peak on Tuesday, November 11. Conditions for viewing should be better since the moon won’t be full. These meteors move slowly and often appear as bright fireballs, a treat for sky watchers!

Even though the weather has been a bit cloudy lately, the sky is expected to clear by Thursday and Friday night just in time for Halloween weekend. So if you head outside and look up, you might just catch a shooting star streaking across the night sky.