How to Watch the Lyrid Meteor Shower This Month
This month, the Universe is throwing a meteor party to which all of humanity is invited. The annual Lyrid meteor shower will fill the night sky with shooting stars in late April. Lyrid meteors should be visible from April 16 to April 25, but the peak of observations is expected from the evening of April 21 to dawn on April 22 and from the evening of April 22 to dawn on April 23.
Lyrid meteors tend to be fast and bright, with long tails that can be seen for a few seconds, and you might even catch a couple of fireballs. On an average year, you can expect about 10 meteors per hour, give or take, but sometimes the Lyrid meteor shower turns into a meteor storm, and you can see about 100 shooting stars per hour. It’s hard to predict when the meteor shower will go on and on, but it could be this year so you don’t want to miss it.
How to spot Lyrid meteors
As with real estate, finding meteors varies by location. For optimal viewing, locate a location away from sources of light pollution and obstacles such as trees and buildings. You need a wide view of the sky from a dark place. Once there, turn off all lights to give your eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness, and get comfortable with a blanket and a warm drink. The moon will be small this year, so conditions are just right, unless it’s cloudy.
To find the shower’s radiant—the place where meteors seem to originate—look for the constellation Hercules. It rises east-northeast in the Northern Hemisphere in spring, but it’s not the easiest constellation to spot, so use a stargazing app like SkyView to make it easier. However, it is usually best to observe meteors away from their radiant. Looking at the shooting stars that seem to be flying straight at you, the tails seem to be shorter.
All about the Lyrid meteor shower
The Lyrid meteors are caused by the Earth passing through a debris plume left by Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher. The comet was first identified in 1861, but the earliest human reaction to the Lyrid meteor shower was much earlier. Chinese astronomers first noted the Lyrids in 687 BC, writing: “At midnight the stars fell like rain.”
Relatively rarely, but in some years, the lyrid rain turns into a meteor storm, and hundreds of shooting stars appear. In 1803, Lyrid meteors inspired a Virginia newspaper reporter to write:
“Shooting stars. This electrical [sic] phenomenon was observed on Wednesday morning in and around Richmond in such a way that it alarmed many and surprised everyone who saw it. From one to three in the morning these stellar meteors seemed to fall from all points of the sky in such quantity that they resembled a shower of celestial rockets.
According to NASA , particularly impressive shower sightings took place in 1922 in Greece, in 1945 in Japan, and in 1982 in the United States.