Halloween Fireballs Peak After Halloween

The "Halloween fireballs" are the Taurids: slow meteors from a wide stream of rubble linked to Comet Encke. NASA's all-sky cameras caught two of them over Arizona on Monday night (Oct 26, local time). Taurids hit the air at about 27 km/s, less than half the speed of the Perseids (59 km/s), so they linger in the sky. The big ones are fragile, so they flare and break apart, like the Nov 8, 2022 fireball over Kentucky, which was brighter than the full Moon. When to look (IMO 2026 Meteor Shower Calendar): the Southern Taurids peak around Nov 5 and the Northern Taurids around Nov 12, with 5 to 10 meteors an hour at best under a dark sky. The Moon, computed for Philadelphia: on Oct 31 it is 57% lit and rises about 11:20 pm EDT, so the early evening is dark. On Nov 5 a thin crescent rises around 4 am EST. On Nov 12 a young crescent sets around 7 pm EST. Taurus rises in the east after dark and is high in the south around midnight. No telescope needed, and a Taurid can appear anywhere in the sky. If you see a bright one, report it to the American Meteor Society. Part of the Taurid debris is caught in a 7:2 resonance with Jupiter. That swarm gave us the fireball years of 2005 and 2015, and Earth may pass close to it again around 2032. Fireball video: NASA Meteoroid Environment Office, All Sky Fireball Network. Sources: International Meteor Organization, 2026 Meteor Shower Calendar; NASA/JPL Horizons and Small-Body Database (Comet 2P/Encke); NASA Meteoroid Environment Office fireball pages and daily logs; Spurny et al. 2017, Astronomy & Astrophysics (Taurid fireballs, new branch); Olech et al. 2017 (Southern Taurids in 2005 and 2015); Clark, Wiegert & Brown 2019, MNRAS (Taurid resonant swarm); American Meteor Society; NASA NSSDC Jupiter fact sheet; ESA Hipparcos. Earth images: NASA Blue Marble and Black Marble. Moon map: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio, CGI Moon Kit (LRO). #taurids #meteorshower #astronomy