A major meteor shower tonight "Orionid Meteor Shower 2012" is expected to put one of this year's best spectacles in the skies starting Saturday at 11 pm.

The meteor shower event will be live streaming by NASA for audiences worldwide. Although it kicks off tonight, the space agency says the best time to look is before sunrise on Sunday October 21.

A live UStream video feed of the Orionid meteor shower will stream views from the skies over Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. (WATCH LIVE STREAM BELOW)

"Earth is passing through a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, the source of the Orionids," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Flakes of comet dust hitting the atmosphere should give us dozens of meteors per hour."

NASA's visibility forecast was very positive for tonight. The agency said that the moon will set before the Orionids' peak in pre-dawn and with less moonlight, the show will be better.

"In addition to Orionids, you'll see brilliant Venus, red Mars, the dog star Sirius and bright winter constellations such as Orion, Gemini and Taurus," NASA said in a statement released about 1 hour before the event.

Orionids appear every year around October when Earth orbits through an area of space full of debris from Halley's Comet. Normally the showers produce 20 or so meteors per hour but since 2006, the Orionids have put one of the greatest shows with up to 60 or more meteors per hour, according to NASA.

WATCH 'ORIONID METEOR SHOWER 2012 LIVE STREAMING BELOW:



Live broadcasting by Ustream

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Space