If you can manage to wake yourself before the crack of dawn on Tuesday, you can get front-row seats to one of the best shows of the year.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
In fact, they'll be just about the best seats in the whole world.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning, the Eta Aquariid meteor shower will peak, peppering the early morning sky.
This year, the annual event syncs up with the new moon, meaning there will be no moon to brighten the sky.
"And the darker the skies, the more meteors you can see," says Australian National University astronomer Dr Brad Tucker.
The meteors will come from the east, near the constellation Aquarius, and streak through the sky.
That's how they get their name; they seem to originate from the star Eta Aquarii, one of the stars that make up the constellation.
The best viewing will be between 3am and dawn, when the Earth has tilted far enough to bring the shower high above the horizon, away from light pollution. Expect about 20 an hour at the show's peak.
The meteor shower will be visible across Australia, and around the world. But the southern hemisphere has the best viewing position, and it will be one of our best meteor showers of the year.
"Go outside and find the darkest spot possible. If you're in the city, a nearby oval. And then give your eyes a few minutes to adjust," Dr Tucker says. "You'll see more and more stars, the sky will become darker."
A common trap for amateur astronomers is to go outside, stare at the sky, and expect to see something immediately, he says. The eyes need several minutes to adjust to the darkness and reveal the full picture.
The meteors are tiny particles of ice and dust - some as big as pebbles, some as small as a grain of sand - that Halley's comet has left behind as it slowly circles the sun.
Earth passes through the comet's orbit, and the dust hits the atmosphere and burns up, creating the skyshow. The streaks are the result of the dense mass of the particles, and of the extreme speed at which they hit the atmosphere.
We're a long way from the comet itself, so the particles burning up in our atmosphere probably crumbled off Halley hundreds of years ago.
None of the comet's detritus is likely to make it to Earth, Dr Tucker says. Halley's comet is an old comet, with many laps around the sun. All the big bits have already long since fallen off. Now all that's left is dust.
