The Orionid meteor shower peaks on the night of October 21 and the early hours of October 22. It is one of two annual showers produced by debris from Halley's Comet, the other being the Eta Aquariids in May.
Dust from Halley's Comet
Halley's Comet last passed through the inner solar system in 1986 and will not return until 2061. Each pass leaves a trail of dust and grit along its orbit. Earth crosses that trail twice a year, and the particles hit the upper atmosphere at high speed and burn up.
Orionid meteors are fast. They enter the atmosphere at roughly 66 kilometres per second, which produces short, bright streaks rather than the slow fireballs some other showers deliver. A fair share leave persistent trains, brief glowing trails that last a second or two after the meteor itself has gone.
When to look
NASA's skywatching guidance for October notes that a bright Moon will obscure some of the fainter streaks this year. The Moon is the main obstacle. The best chances come in the hours before dawn, after the Moon has set and before the sky begins to brighten.
No equipment is needed. Find a spot away from street lights, let your eyes adapt for 15 to 20 minutes, and look up rather than at a phone. Meteors appear across the whole sky, though their paths trace back to a point near Orion, which rises in the east after midnight. Lying back on a blanket beats standing and craning.
What you can still see
Under a dark sky the Orionids typically produce somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 meteors an hour at peak, and moonlight will cut into that. Patience matters more than timing. A half hour of watching usually brings a handful of clear streaks, and the occasional bright one makes the wait worthwhile.
The shower tails off quickly after the peak but stays active at low rates into early November. Later in the month, on October 27 and 28, the Moon passes close to the Pleiades star cluster in the eastern evening sky, a pairing visible without a telescope and easier to catch than a meteor.