Some stargazing events, like this year's partial solar eclipse, are relatively brief – mix up the date and time, and you'll miss them.
Not so with the Taurids (sometimes called Halloween fireballs) however, which offer two stunning and days-long sets of meteor showers a year.
These are split into the Southern Taurid meteor shower, which started on 10 September and will keep going until November 20 this year, and the Northern Taurids, which will peak tonight.
Even though meteors are sometimes called "shooting stars", they don't actually fire themselves towards Earth. Instead, our planet passes through the space debris surrounding a comet as it orbits the sun.
When this rubble enters our atmosphere, it compresses and superheats the air surrounding it. That leads to a glowing "head" and, sometimes, a streaking "tail".
"The Northern and Southern Taurids are two fragments of the same debris cloud, and they are similar in density, so the peaks are about the same," Royal Museum Greenwich (RMG) explains.
The Taurid meteor showers aren't very rapid compared to other displays – these "comet crumbs" are larger and fewer, and move more slowly. This is because the comet stream they come from is very dispersed, which has pros and cons for stargazers.
Not so with the Taurids (sometimes called Halloween fireballs) however, which offer two stunning and days-long sets of meteor showers a year.
These are split into the Southern Taurid meteor shower, which started on 10 September and will keep going until November 20 this year, and the Northern Taurids, which will peak tonight.
Even though meteors are sometimes called "shooting stars", they don't actually fire themselves towards Earth. Instead, our planet passes through the space debris surrounding a comet as it orbits the sun.
When this rubble enters our atmosphere, it compresses and superheats the air surrounding it. That leads to a glowing "head" and, sometimes, a streaking "tail".
"The Northern and Southern Taurids are two fragments of the same debris cloud, and they are similar in density, so the peaks are about the same," Royal Museum Greenwich (RMG) explains.
The Taurid meteor showers aren't very rapid compared to other displays – these "comet crumbs" are larger and fewer, and move more slowly. This is because the comet stream they come from is very dispersed, which has pros and cons for stargazers.