Orionids from London in 2026

Orionids from London: the short answer

The Orionids reaches maximum at 19:23 local time on 21 October 2026 over London, England (51.5°N, 0.13°W, 25 m). The radiant culminates 54.1° high at 05:21 and the useful window runs 02:00–06:00, with an ideal-sky ceiling of 16.2 meteors an hour.

That ranks it 4th of twelve from London this year, behind the Geminids (141.5/h) and the Perseids (84.4/h).

The radiant track over this city

Orion carries the radiant. From London it clears the horizon at 21:59 on a bearing of 64° (ENE), reaches 54.1° at 05:21 in the south, and drops back below the horizon at 12:44. Within the observing window it peaks at 53.9°.

When it gets dark here

London loses the Sun at 17:54 and gets it back at 07:36. True astronomical darkness — the only part that counts for faint meteors — runs 19:46 to 05:44, 9 h 59 min out of 13 h 42 min of night.

Local solar midnight, the true middle of the night, falls at 00:45 here rather than at 00:00: Europe/London runs 61 minutes ahead of mean solar time at 0.13°W. That offset is why the best hour on this page is not the hour you would guess from the clock.

What the Moon does here

Moonlight is the limiting factor on this night from London. The Moon is 80% lit and only 5 of 13 sampled hours are moon-free. Moonrise 16:09. Moonset 02:49. At the best hour it stands 19.9° below the horizon, pulling the limiting magnitude down to 6.50.

Why 16 an hour and not 20

Converting ZHR 20 into something useful for London means multiplying by sin(53.9°) and dividing by 2.5 raised to (6.5 − 6.50). That lands at 16.2 meteors an hour, from very fast 66.1 km/s entries.

Hour by hour the modelled rate runs from 0.0 at 19:00 (radiant -19.5°) to 0.0 at 07:00 (radiant 49.1°), peaking at 16.2. That spread across 13 hours is why a "what time" answer beats a "how many" answer.

The stream comes from Comet 1P/Halley and is listed as active 2 October to 7 November, so 21 October 2026 is the best night from London rather than the only one.

Watching from around London

London, England is the 28th largest of the 300 cities covered here, with a population of 8.96 million at 25 m above sea level. The nearest other cities on the site are Paris (344 km SSE), Hamburg (720 km ENE), Munich (918 km ESE) — close enough that the radiant altitudes barely change, far enough that sunset and moonrise do.

What this page does not know

Light-pollution data for this location is not connected yet. Rates on this page are computed against the reference rural sky the zenithal hourly rate is defined for (naked-eye limiting magnitude 6.5); they are not a claim about how bright the sky is where you are standing. Once the light-pollution layer is connected these figures will be recomputed for the local sky and will generally fall.

Cloud cover is a forecast, not a constant, so it is resolved when you load the tonight card and is deliberately absent from this prerendered page — the hourly table shows "unavailable" rather than assuming clear skies. Meteor outbursts, local terrain and building horizons are not modelled.

A single observer with an unobstructed horizon typically records 30–50% below the ideal-sky figure. Give your eyes twenty minutes to adapt, keep bright screens away, look about halfway up the sky rather than straight at the radiant, and count for a full hour before judging a shower.