Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner from Kitt Peak. Image via NASA.

Wanted to give everybody a heads up about the Draconid meteor shower set to peak on October 8, 2011.

Every 6.6 years the inner solar system is visited by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner and it looks like this year we could pass though the dust it leaves behind.

It looks like viewers in Europe are going to be best position as the best outbursts should be between 1900 and 2100 UTC (3:00 to 5:00 pm EDT) and the counts could be as high as 750 meteors per hour!!

Now while North America isn’t position extrodinarly well for the show, I would expect to see at least some activity in the dark hours before and after the peak predicted hours.  I will be outside watching under clear skies (YAY!) at around 04:00 and after 00:00 EDT.  I’ll let you know via an update to this post one way or another.

Click this NASA link for mroe details.