Orionids and Taurids 2026: a predawn shower and two slow evening streams

Key dates

• Orionids: active Oct 2 to Nov 7. The peak falls at about 18:28 UT on Oct 21, which is 2:28 p.m. EDT, 1:28 p.m. CDT, 12:28 p.m. MDT and 11:28 a.m. PDT. That's daytime, so the night of Wednesday, Oct 21 into Thursday, Oct 22 is the one to plan for.
• Southern Taurids: active from September to Nov 20, with a broad peak around Nov 5 (about 2 p.m. EST). Watch the nights of Nov 4–5 and Nov 5–6.
• Northern Taurids: active Oct 20 to Dec 10, with a broad peak around Nov 12 (about 1 p.m. EST). Watch the nights of Nov 11–12 and Nov 12–13.
• Clocks: daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov 1. Orionid times here are daylight time and Taurid times are standard time. Arizona stays on Mountain Standard Time throughout.

Orionids: wait for moonset

At the Orionid peak the Moon is a waxing gibbous about 80 percent lit, and on the morning of Oct 22 it sets between about 2 and 4 a.m. local time.

Published figures for the Moon range from about 74 to 87 percent depending on the source and the hour, but the conclusion is the same: the first half of the night is bright. The radiant, the point in Orion that the meteors appear to come from, rises between about 10 and 11 p.m. local time and is about 30 degrees up by roughly 1 a.m. From moonset until the sky starts to brighten, the radiant is high in the south-southeast and the sky is at its darkest. That's your window.

Arriving earlier still has value. After midnight the Moon is in the western sky, heading down, so you can shoot toward Orion with it behind you, at a lower ISO.

How many Orionids to expect

The Orionids have a zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) of about 20. ZHR is a standardized figure: the number one observer would see in an hour under a perfectly dark sky with the radiant straight overhead. Real counts are always lower, because the radiant is lower, the sky is never perfect and a camera covers only part of it. Even at a dark site after moonset, expect well under 20 an hour.

Orionids are fast, about 66 km (41 miles) per second, and are debris from Halley's Comet. Not every streak you catch will be an Orionid: NASA notes that several random meteors an hour appear on any clear night. Trace a trail backward; if it points to Orion, it's one of them.

The Taurids: slow meteors, dark evenings

The Taurids come in two overlapping streams with radiants in Taurus, near the Pleiades and the bright star Aldebaran. Each gives only about five meteors an hour under a dark, moonless sky, according to the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada as quoted by EarthSky. With both active in early and mid-November, about 10 an hour is a good night.

They earn a session for other reasons. At about 27 to 29 km (17 to 18 miles) per second they move at less than half the Orionids' speed, and the stream includes occasional fireballs, which make up about 1 percent of Taurid meteors in most years. No fireball swarm is predicted for 2026; the next predicted one is in 2032. The Southern Taurids come from Comet 2P/Encke, and the Northern Taurids are linked to the asteroid 2004 TG10.

The timing is friendly. The radiant rises between about 5 and 6:30 p.m. local standard time, is about 30 degrees up by roughly 8 to 9 p.m. and stays high past midnight. Around Nov 5 the Moon is a thin waning crescent, about 12 percent lit, that rises after midnight; around Nov 12 it is a thin waxing crescent that sets early in the evening, with new Moon on Nov 9 in between. Evening sessions work, which makes the Taurids a good first meteor shower to try.

Where to go

For the Orionids you need a dark sky to the east and south before dawn; for the Taurids, a dark eastern sky in the evening. The places below hold dark-sky designations. Check the DarkSky directory and each park's own page before you go, since access and rules change.

• Desert Southwest: Big Bend National Park in west Texas; Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico, reached on dirt roads where high-clearance four-wheel drive is advised and wet weather can close access; Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah, the first International Dark Sky Park (2007); and Grand Canyon National Park.
• California and Nevada: Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park near Borrego Springs, and Great Basin National Park, where the Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive closes for winter and after snowfall.
• Rockies and Northwest: the Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve around Stanley and Ketchum, Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado, and Prineville Reservoir and Cottonwood Canyon state parks in Oregon.
• East and Midwest: Cherry Springs State Park in north-central Pennsylvania, open every day of the year (its campground closes in late October); the Headlands International Dark Sky Park at Mackinaw City, Michigan; Stephen C. Foster State Park at Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp; and Pickett CCC Memorial State Park in Tennessee.

How to photograph them

• Lens and exposure: use your widest lens, ideally 14 to 24 mm on full frame, wide open at f/1.4 to f/2.8, and start at ISO 3200 (anywhere from 1600 to 6400 works). For exposure length, the 500 rule is a simple guide: divide 500 by the focal length, after multiplying it by your sensor's crop factor, to get the longest exposure in seconds before stars start to streak. At 20 mm that's 25 seconds. The stricter NPF rule, which also accounts for aperture and pixel size, gives shorter times on high-resolution sensors; most astro apps calculate it.
• Shoot continuously: set an intervalometer or the camera's interval mode to fire frame after frame for an hour or more, in RAW, with long-exposure noise reduction off so there are no gaps. Most frames will be empty, which is normal.
• Framing: point about 20 to 40 degrees away from the radiant and 50 to 70 degrees up, the field the International Meteor Organization suggests for observers. Include some foreground. For the Orionids, Orion itself anchors the frame; for the Taurids, the Pleiades.
• Focus: switch to manual focus, magnify the live view on a bright star, focus until it's a pinpoint, then tape the ring.
• Phones: put the phone on a tripod, use night mode at its longest setting and take many frames. Phones catch mainly the brightest meteors, which suits Taurid fireballs.
• Dew and power: autumn nights bring dew, so a lens heater band or a hand warmer strapped to the lens helps. Cold drains batteries faster; keep spares in an inside pocket.

Other targets on the same nights

• Zodiacal light: the morning season runs until about early November. Look east in the dark hour before morning twilight, once the Moon has set.
• Hunter's Moon: the full Moon falls at 12:12 a.m. EDT on Oct 26, which is the evening of Oct 25 in Central, Mountain and Pacific time.
• Nov 7, before sunrise: a thin crescent Moon, Venus and Spica within 2.5 degrees of each other, low in the east-southeast.
• Weather: check a site forecast such as the Clear Sky Chart, which covers cloud, transparency and seeing up to 96 hours ahead but doesn't include smoke.
• If you catch an Orionid or a slow Taurid fireball, share the frame in the Astro photography hobby on Garbamons.