A spectacular meteor shower lit up the skies during the predawn hours on the day that King Charles will be officially recognised as the United Kingdom's monarch.
The phenomenon took place in the early hours of Saturday, May 6, much to the delight of stargazers across the UK and the rest of the world.
The display is made up of between 120 and 160 shooting stars per hour, with the Eta Aquariids set to occur when the Earth passes through the debris trail of Comet Halley.
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It favoured the Southern Hemisphere and appeared low in the sky for northerly latitudes in the early predawn hours.
Rather aptly, Halley’s Comet is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of the Norman Conquest by William the Conqueror – Charles’s ancestor.
The Eta Aquariid meteor shower is visible in UK skies between April 19 and May 28 and, according to RMG, pieces of space debris speed through our planet's night sky at speeds of up to 70 kilometres per second.
This debris causes the streaks of light that lucky stargazers sometimes see in the night sky, the experts explain.
They add: "The Eta Aquariids is one of two meteor showers created by debris from Comet Halley. The other is the Orionid meteor shower which comes in October."
It gets its name from the Aquarius constellation, the part of the sky where the shower is most visible, where there is one star called Eta Aquarii.
Despite its beauty, some anicent civilisations thought the arrival of meteor showers heralded incoming bad (or good) news.
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