Keen stargazers are set for a spectacular show this week with a flurry of shooting stars set to grace the night sky on Wednesday.

The Orionid Meteor Shower is due to peak on the evening of Wednesday, October 21 with an estimated 15 meteors per hour to feast your eyes on.

The Orionids, which peak during mid-October each year, are considered to be one of the most beautiful meteor showers of the year.

Orionid meteors are known for their brightness and for their speed, travelling at about 148,000 mph into the Earth's atmosphere, leaving glowing trails of debris and sometimes bursting into fireballs.

The Orionids are viewable in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres during the hours after midnight.

Clacton and Frinton Gazette:

Orionid meteor shower: where to look. Photo: PA

Nasa recommends stargazers find an area well away from street lights to watch the show. Within less than 30 minutes in the dark your eyes will adapt and you will begin to see meteors.

The shower should last until dawn, so there is plenty of time to see the shooting stars.

The debris that interacts with our atmosphere to create the Orionids originate from a comet named Halley, last seen in 1986.

Each time that Halley returns to the inner solar system its nucleus sheds ice and rocky dust into space.

The dust grains eventually become the Orionids in October and the Eta Aquarids in May if they collide with Earth's atmosphere.

Comet Halley takes about 76 years to orbit the sun once and will not enter the inner solar system again until 2061.