Tonight's Eta Aquarid meteor shower will be remembered as the Cinco de Mayo shower where debris from Halley's Comet will be scattered in the night sky.

Later tonight towards the early morning hours of May 6, skygazers and observers will have the opportunity to enjoy bits and pieces of Halley's Comet as "comet litter" where it will span through the planet's atmosphere via meteors. 

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Starting at 8 P.M. EDT there will also be a free webcast of the meteor shower from the Slooh community observatory, streaming live at the official website.

Astronomers have predicted that the Eta Aquarid meteor shower will peak tonight into the early hours of tomorrow, May 6. Observers can spot these meteors under ideal conditions (dark, moonless, away from light pollution skies) at a rate of 40 fast meteors every hour. Although, prior to tonight's peak shower, the Eta Aquarids were at a quarter of its peak strength in the last three to four days.

However, there will be some viewing constraints for this sparkling meteor shower as a full moon was looming from Sunday and even if its glow has been waning, the moon will now enter the bright gibbous phase during the peak morning where it can illuminate the sky even more, making fainter meteor streaks disappear in the early morning. 

Another obstacle will be for those watching from the northern region of the equator which is called the "radiant" as this will be the emanation point of meteors. This means that the Aquarius constellation will appear on the southeast horizon later at 3 A.M. EDT but it will not be seen at high in the sky unlike north temperate latitudes; meteor sightings will now be less than 40 every hour for this area.

For most night sky watchers, the meteor shower will be emerging from the radiant and will skim the atmosphere in a horizontal manner that are called "Earthgazers" and will leave more colorful than usual, longer lasting trails.

According to Robert Lunsford from the International Meteor Organization, these meteors will be extremely long where they can cover the horizon instead of shooting overhead as most cameras are focused.

According to Bill Cooke from the Space Environments team of the Marshall Space Flight Center, earthgazers are not that many, and for those who can spot them, they will most likely to remember them.

Tonight's meteor shower will be a memorable one since they provide the romantic, incandescent streak from the material originating from Halley's Comet's nucleus. When these bits and pieces fall from the comet and dusting the Earth tonight, friction in the atmosphere transforms them into white heat energy that produces "shooting stars".

Halley's Comet journeys around the sun with an elliptical orbit also taking the orbit of Neptune and the inside orbit of Venus. This orbit takes around 75 years to complete where its last visit to the sun was in 1986. Halley's Comet will return and visit Earth during the summer of 2061.

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