If you missed out on seeing Halley's Comet during its last Earth flyby in 1986, don't despair — you can spot tiny pieces of the icy wanderer overhead this week. Dusty debris that Halley's Comet has shed on its 75-year-long laps around the sun slams into Earth's atmosphere during the first week of May every year, creating an annual meteor shower known as the Eta Aquarids. (Another Halley-spawned shower, the Orionids, occurs every October.) The Eta Aquarids are usually the year’s richest meteor shower for Southern Hemisphere observers, but north of the equator it's one of the more difficult annual displays to observe. [See photos from past Eta Aquarid meteor showers] This year, the shower will ...
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