Three Halley meteors photographed in Toccoa

Astrophotographer Tim McCollum captured three bright meteors from the Orionid shower above Toccoa, Georgia, on Oct. 21. The image was created by merging multiple exposures taken in the early hours of the morning as the annual display approached its peak activity.

The meteors are fragments of Comet 1P/Halley, which is currently located more than 3 billion miles from Earth. Despite the comet's distance, the dust particles it shed continue to intersect with Earth's atmosphere, creating visible light trails in the autumn sky.

McCollum recorded the three meteors between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Oct. 21. In the composite image, the meteors appear to radiate from a point near Betelgeuse, a red giant star in the constellation Orion. This radiant point marks the origin of the shower's activity.

The photographer used a Canon EOS Ra camera paired with an RF 28-70 f2.0 lens to capture the scene. He took multiple 30-second exposures while using a star tracker to keep the camera aligned with the radiant. The individual frames were processed and merged using PixInsight software.

The final image contains several deep sky objects in addition to the meteor trails. The stars of Orion's Belt and the Orion Nebula appear on the right side of the frame. The Rosette Nebula, cataloged as Caldwell 49, is also visible within the dense starfield and dust lanes of the Milky Way's galactic plane.

The Orionid meteor shower remains active until Nov. 7, providing additional nights for observers to view the display. Earth is currently passing through debris streams from Comet 2P/Encke, which are associated with the Taurid meteor shower and can occasionally produce large fireballs around Halloween.