Badger: A good year for the Lyrid meteor shower

The Lyrid meteor shower will peak overnight. The best time will probably be between 3 and 5 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, April 22. Although not one of the most well-known showers, the Lyrids can produce up to 20 naked-eye meteors per hour at the Lyrids’ peak rate. This is an average wait of three minutes between meteors. They will come randomly, so it may be longer or shorter. The Lyrids can sometimes have a much higher rate—up to 100 per hour, but no one knows why such swarms occur.

Away from the peak time there is less activity. You can still find some Lyrids for five days before or after the peak, from April 16 to April 26.

Meteor showers recur on an annual schedule. Each shower has a radiant point where the meteors seem to stream from.

The reason for this is that a meteor shower is a collision between a stream of dust and pebbles on a common orbit and the Earth. Every year the Earth encounters the stream at the same place, coming from the same direction. The space debris making up the shower was shed by a (usually extinct) comet as it orbited the Sun. The Lyrids are associated with comet C/1861 GI (Thatcher).

If the comet orbit comes close to the Earth’s orbit, the flow of material produces many meteors all coming from the same direction. These parallel trails all appear to radiate away from a point in the sky because of geometric perspective. This is just like when you look down a long straight street and all of the horizontal roof lines seem to converge on the same point down the street, no matter how high the buildings are.

The Lyrid meteors are quite fast, impacting our atmosphere at 110,000 miles per hour. This is a combination of the meteor’s orbit and the Earth’s 30,000 mile per hour orbit.

Technically, the radiant of the Lyrids is in the constellation Hercules, but the bright star Vega in Lyra is nearby, drawing our attention, and the name Lyrids has stuck. The shower was named before formal constellation boundaries were determined. You can see Vega low in the NE at 10 p.m., but the best viewing is later when Vega is almost overhead.

Observing meteor showers is quite safe. Virtually every meteor completely disintegrates in the atmosphere. It’s happening all around, so don’t concentrate your view on Vega, take in the whole sky if possible.

The moon rises at 4:17 a.m. EDT, but it is only a waning crescent with 19% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated. Still, you will see more meteors if you get away from any extra illumination. If you do leave home, be sure to choose a safe location. Use mosquito repellent, and be comfortable. You don’t need binoculars or a telescope, just an open sky above you. Take some time, perhaps an hour. A lounge chair or blanket makes it easier to keep looking up.

Located in the back of the Eastern Florida State College Cocoa Campus, the Astronaut Memorial Planetarium has the largest sky dome around. Come see sky shows, IMAX movies, and rock ‘n roll laser shows. Here’s the schedule for the coming week:

Friday Evening, 4/21

7:00 P.M. Amazing Universe

8:15 P.M. Whales (IMAX movie)

9:00 P.M. The Led Zeppelin Laser Experience

Saturday Evening, 4/22

7:00 P.M. The Planets

8:15 P.M. Solar Max (IMAX movie)

9:00 P.M. Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon" (Laser)

Wednesday Matinée, 4/26

2:00 P.M. The Cowboy Astronomer

3:15 P.M. The Living Sea (IMAX movie)

The EFSC observatory is regularly open to the public from 6:30 p.m. to about 10:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights. Mars is still visible early in the evening. Jupiter should be visible in our telescope about 8:45 p.m. Add a bookmark in your web browser at https://www.calendarwiz.com/planetarium to keep up with the planetarium show schedule.

Mr. Badger is Project Coordinator at the Eastern Florida State College Planetarium in Cocoa. Send questions, suggestions, or comments to badgerb@easternflorida.edu

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