The Lyrid meteor shower will soon peak: Here are the best nights and times to see it
The Lyrid meteor shower will soon peak: Here are the best nights and times to see it
Still nursing your eclipse hangover? The first meteor shower of spring, which will compete with a bright moon, is expected to peak on Monday and Tuesday.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane!! It’s . . . the first spring meteor shower for the Northern Hemisphere!
The Lyrid meteor shower is upon us. It lasts from April 15 to April 29 and is expected to peak on Monday, April 22, and Tuesday, April 23. This is one of the oldest observed meteor showers; the first recorded sighting occurred in 687 BCE by Chinese astronomers.
How to see the Lyrid meteor shower
This meteor shower is visible from the Northern Hemisphere, and it’s best when the sky is at its darkest. Unfortunately, during the Lyrids’ peak this year, the moon will be in its waxing gibbous phase, which will light up the sky. Therefore, the meteor shower will be harder to see, so anything you can do to find as dark a sky as possible—away from city lights—will be best.
It’s still worth seeking out, though; at its peak, the Lyrids can send 15 to 20 meteors per hour shooting through the night sky.
The Lyrids are bright and fast-moving (at around 29 miles/second), but they don’t leave long dust trails behind them like other meteors. As a result, it’s best to look away from the radiant (the point where they appear to originate from) for the best and longest show. If you look directly at the radiant, which is near Vega (one of the brightest stars in the northern hemisphere sky), the meteors will appear very short.
Where do these meteors come from?
As comets traverse the solar system, they leave trails of dust debris in their wake. When Earth passes through these trails, this dust enters our atmosphere, giving us a spectacular show—a meteor shower.
The Lyrid meteor shower is a product of the comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher, which was first discovered in 1861. The orbital period, or the time it takes the comet to travel around the sun, is 415.5 years. This makes it a long-period comet (meaning its orbit of the sun is over 200 years). It may have originated in the Oort cloud, which is the shell of icy objects surrounding our solar system that scientists have theorized about but never directly observed because the objects within it are too small.
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