DC warns of potential for violence and election uncertainty ahead of Jan. 6

(NEW YORK) — Another dazzling display of the wonders of outer space will be visible from Earth in the coming days.

The annual Orionid meteor shower, which originates from Halley’s Comet, is expected light up the night sky starting this weekend.

Considered by NASA as “one of the most beautiful showers of the year,” the Orionids are the latest astronomical event this month, which already has included a strong solar storm that led to widespread northern lights, the Tsuchinshan-Atlas comet, and the brightest supermoon of the year.

“There’s been a lot of great celestial events this year alone,” Shawn Dahl, coordinator for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told ABC News, describing them as “a lot of glorious things to see in the sky.”

The Orionid meteor shower is produced every year when Earth passes through the debris – composed of ice and dust – left behind by Halley’s Comet, according to NASA.

When the debris trail intersects Earth’s atmosphere, the debris disintegrates and creates streaks in the sky, according to NASA.

The intensity of the peak activity tends to vary, but they are “much higher than usual” this year, Elizabeth Macdonald, a space physicist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told ABC News.

In a normal year, the Orionids produce 10 to 20 showers per hour, but during exceptional years, such as 2006 to 2009, the peak rates were on par with the Perseids, at about 50 to 75 per hour, according to the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

The Orionids can be seen from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres without a telescope, according to NASA. In the Northern Hemisphere, face southeast, and if in the Southern hemisphere, face northeast.

However, the light from the supermoon, which began to wane on Friday, is expected to limit a lot of visibility, Macdonald said.

“The moon is going to bleach out a lot of meteors,” she said.

But even with the full moon, “relatively bright” meteors from Orionid tend to streak across the sky, said Dahl, who does backyard astronomy as a hobby.

Traveling to the darkest spot possible will likely increase the chances of seeing the shower, Macdonald said. It is also important for stargazers to keep their eyes dark-adapted in order to see the meteors, which includes avoiding constant interaction with the bright screen of a cell phone, Dahl said.

“In less than 30 minutes in the dark, your eyes will adapt and you will begin to see meteors,” NASA advised. “Be patient – the show will last until dawn, so you have plenty of time to catch a glimpse.”

Awareness of the direction to look toward is important as well, Dahl said. The meteors tend to be “pointing back” as they’re streaking through the sky, so looking toward the radiant in the sky – that is, the point where the paths of meteors appear to meet – will increase the chances of seeing them, Dahl said.

“You have to be kind of know the general area of the sky to look,” Dahl said. “That’s why [meteors] have a name.”

The radiant of meteors is the constellation from which they appear to originate, according to NASA. For the Orionids, the radiant is the constellation Orion.

But it is not necessary to only look toward the radiant, as the Orionids are visible across the night sky, according to NASA, which advised viewing the Orionids from 45 to 90 degrees away from the radiant.

The Orionids tend to peak during mid-October every year, according to NASA, with the hours after midnight typically the best viewing times.

The meteor shower is expected to peak on Sunday and Monday, at which point the moon will be 83% full, according to the AMS.

The best time to see the meteor shower will probably be Monday night, once the supermoon has waned, Macdonald said.

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(DELPHI, Ind.) — A 30-second video filmed by 14-year-old victim Libby German just before she was murdered in Delphi, Indiana, was played for the jury on Tuesday during Richard Allen’s trial.

Allen is accused of killing Libby and 13-year-old Abby Williams while the best friends walked on a trail in their small town on the afternoon of Feb. 13, 2017.

The video — played during testimony from Indiana State Police digital forensic examiner Brian Bunner — showed Libby filming herself and Abby walking on the Monon High Bridge. At one point, the camera panned up, and no one was behind Abby. In a later shot, the video shows a man walking behind her.

According to Indianapolis ABC affiliate WRTV, a girl’s voice is heard on the video saying, “There’s no path — the trail ends here, so we have to go down here?”

Libby’s mother cried in court when she heard the voice.

The video, which was not enhanced, was played just once for the jury.

Libby posted a photo of Abby on Snapchat as they walked over the Monon High Bridge, prosecutor Nick McLeland told the jury last week in his opening statement. After the girls crossed the bridge, they saw a man behind them, and Libby started a recording on her phone at 2:13 p.m., he said.

The man pulled out a gun and ordered the girls to go “down the hill,” McLeland said. The girls complied, he said, and then the video on Libby’s phone stopped recording.

The eighth graders’ bodies were discovered near the trail one day later.

Indiana State Police crime scene investigator Brian Olehy testified Monday that both girls’ necks were cut, noting that Libby’s was “viciously slashed.” A large pool of blood was visible between their bodies, he said.

Olehy said some of the girls’ clothing was found inside-out in the nearby creek.

Sticks were partially laid over the bodies, Olehy said. When he and another deputy lifted Libby’s body off the ground to place it in a body bag, he said leaves and dirt stuck to her back.

Libby’s phone — in its Harry Potter-themed case — was found underneath Abby’s body, Olehy said.

On Tuesday, Olehy returned to the stand and walked the jury through evidence collected during the autopsies, including: sex assault evidence kits for Abby and Libby; Libby’s Delphi swimming sweatshirt with red stains; jeans with red stains; a gray bra with red stains and a black bra with red stains.

Libby’s mom wiped away tears as Olehy explained the sex assault evidence collection kit.

During cross-examination, defense attorney Brad Rozzi asked if any of the recovered DNA evidence was linked to Allen, and Olehy responded, “No.”

Rozzi asked Olehy if it seemed like the sticks in between the girls’ bodies were placed there intentionally. Olehy replied, “They appeared to be placed there by an individual,” and he went on to say the sticks seemed to be an “attempt at concealment.”

Allen, a Delphi resident, was arrested in 2022 and has pleaded not guilty to murder. Allen has admitted to police that he was on the trail that day, but he denied any involvement in the murders, according to court documents.

ABC News’ Janel Klein contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Former FTX executive Caroline Ellison said she deserves no prison time for her role in one of the largest financial frauds in history and federal prosecutors seem inclined to agree.

Ellison’s attorneys urged Judge Lewis Kaplan to be lenient when he sentences her Tuesday afternoon, arguing Ellison “unflinchingly acknowledged her own wrongdoing, without minimization, blame shifting or self-pity.” They added, “She time and again proved herself an enormously credible and important cooperating witness” against her on again-off again boyfriend, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Ellison testified for three days at Bankman-Fried’s trial that ended with a conviction on all seven counts: wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud on FTX’s customers; wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud on Alameda Research’s lenders; conspiracy to commit securities fraud on FTX’s investors; conspiracy to commit commodities fraud on FTX’s customers; and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Federal prosecutors agreed Ellison provided “extraordinary cooperation that was crucial to the Government’s successful prosecution” of Bankman-Fried.

“Although she did not blow the whistle on any misconduct before FTX’s collapse, she came clean prior to FTX’s declaring bankruptcy to her employees on November 9, 2022,” prosecutor Danielle Sassoon wrote in a letter to the judge. “Ellison approached her cooperation with remarkable candor, remorse, and seriousness.”

Prosecutors declined to make a specific sentencing recommendation. Defense attorneys suggested a sentence in line with a recommendation from probation officials of time served plus three years supervised release.

“Caroline poses no risk of recidivism and presents no threat to public safety. It would therefore promote respect for the law to grant leniency in recognition of Caroline’s early disclosure of the crimes, her unmitigated acceptance of responsibility for them, and—most importantly—her extensive cooperation with the government,” defense attorney Anjan Sahni wrote in a letter to the judge.

Sahni outlined Ellison’s “complex” relationship with Bankman-Fried that began when the two met at Jane Street Capital in 2015 when she was an intern and he was a junior trader.

“Caroline moved around the globe at his direction, first to Hong Kong and later the Bahamas” while working “long, stressful, Adderall-fueled hours,” Sahni said.

“Caroline was in an on-again-off-again, sometimes-secret relationship with Mr. Bankman-Fried that she understood at the time was fundamentally unequal. Deeply unhappy, Caroline repeatedly considered leaving Alameda, but Mr. Bankman-Fried convinced her to stay, telling her she was essential to the survival of the business, and that he loved her (while also perversely demonstrating that he considered her not good enough to be seen in public with him at high-profile events),” the defense letter said.

Her attorney said it all “warped” her moral compass and led her to take actions “that she knew to be wrong, helping him steal billions.”

Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March. He has filed an appeal to overturn his conviction.

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