How to spot the Lyrid meteor shower tonight

The Lyridi meteor shower peaks on the evening of April 22 or the early hours of the 23rd, but you can look for them anytime between the 16th and the 25th. A new scientistThe Star Companion will tell you what to look for. You can find the audio below or in the podcast episode feed for The world, the universe and us.

Meteors are caused by high-velocity debris from space hitting Earth’s atmosphere. These tiny grains of dust or rock enter the atmosphere at such a speed that the friction between them and the air causes them to burn, creating lightning that moves across the sky.

like The earth makes its annual trip around the sun, it passes through a series of clouds of dust and debris left by comets or asteroids, which increases the number of meteors we see. This is why the same meteor showers happen at the same time every year.

The Lyridi meteor shower is caused by the long-period comet C/1861 G1, also known as Thatcher. Discovered in 1861, Thatcher takes 415 years to orbit the sun. It is expected to return to our part of the Solar System around 2278.

You don’t have to look at one part of the sky to see a meteor shower. But each is named after a part of the sky where the meteors seem to originate or radiate from. In this case, it is the constellation Lyra in the northern hemisphere, which contains the bright star Vega.

If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, you can look for the constellation Lyra. The constellation will not be visible from the southern hemisphere, but meteors can travel in all directions, so some shooting stars may be visible if you look east.

From the northern hemisphere, Lyra will be in the east just after sunset. If you look a little later, it will be higher in the sky, making it a better time to look for meteors – although the closer you get to sunrise, the brighter the sky will be.

The easiest way to find Lyra is to look for a pattern of stars known as Summer triangleso named because it consists of three bright stars in the shape of a triangle, and in the summer in the northern hemisphere, around midnight, it appears directly overhead. At midnight in late April, the three bright stars will appear near the eastern horizon. The tallest of them is Vegaand this is in Lira.

If you’re looking at the top and have a clear, dark sky, you can see between 10 and 18 meteors per hour.