The Orionid meteor shower peaked on the nights of Oct. 21-23, delighting lucky stargazers with a gorgeous natural fireworks display as debris from Halley’s Comet collided with Earth’s atmosphere to create fiery shooting stars in the night sky.
Fathi’s composite skyscape was created by combining a three-minute exposure of the night sky with multiple 10-second shots of meteors captured using a Nikon Z6 camera fitted with a 14-24 mm Nikkor lens.
The peak of the 2025 Orionid meteor shower coincided with October’s new moon phase, which presented stargazers with a magnificently dark night sky in which even the faintest shooting stars could be spotted flaring to life against the starfield beyond.
“Note by then the radiant will have moved eastward into western Gemini so folks should not be surprised to see these meteors shooting from that constellation instead of Orion”.
Photographers interested in capturing their own shooting stars should check out our guide to imaging meteor showers, along with our roundups of the top cameras and lenses for astrophotography.
The nights of October saw the height of the Orionid meteor shower. As debris from Halley’s Comet collided with Earth’s atmosphere to produce fiery shooting stars in the night sky, lucky stargazers were treated to a breathtaking natural fireworks display from 21 to 23.
Among these fortunate skywatchers was photographer Osama Fathi, who in October witnessed a breathtaking sight of Orionid meteors sweeping across the sky over Lake Qarun in Egypt. 19, as the shower increased activity before its three-day peak.
“A few meteor frames taken over three hours from Qatrani, near the northern edge of the lake, are combined in this composite image,” Fathi wrote in an email to Space . com. Only a small number of brilliant meteors gracefully aligned close to the constellation Orion, which is visible in the center right of the frame, out of the more than 200 images taken during the session. “.
Using a Nikon Z6 camera with a 14–24 mm Nikkor lens, Fathi took several 10-second pictures of meteors and combined them with a three-minute exposure of the night sky to create his composite skyscape.
October’s new moon phase coincided with the 2025 Orionid meteor shower’s peak, giving astronomers a stunningly dark night sky where even the smallest shooting stars could be seen flaring to life against the starfield beyond.
If, in October, clouds worked together to obscure your view. According to Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society, there is no reason to be concerned about the 21–23 peak because there will be a lot more shooting stars to see in the days ahead. “After these dates, rates will fall very slowly, so the mornings of October 24-26 will still provide hourly rates in excess of 10 per hour when viewing from rural dark skies,” Lunsford wrote in an email to Space . com. “People should not be shocked to see these meteors shooting from western Gemini instead of Orion because by that time the radiant will have moved eastward into that constellation.”.
Our guide to photographing meteor showers and our reviews of the best astrophotography cameras and lenses are great resources for photographers who want to take their own shooting stars.
