JACKSON, Wyo. — The peak of the Lyrid meteor shower will happen before dawn on April 22, roughly between midnight and 4 a.m.
According to Samuel Singer, founder and executive director of Wyoming Stargazing, the Lyrid meteor shower is the oldest known meteor shower. It’s been observed for 2,700 years.
The name Lyrid comes from Lyra, the name of the constellation the meteors seem to stream from. This time of year, Lyra is on the eastern sky and low to the horizon, but as the night progresses it will raise higher and higher.
“Every meteor shower is named for the area in the sky from which it seems to emanate,” Singer says. “It’s not associated with the stars in that constellation.”
Meteor showers are all about where the debris fields are out in space; when the earth’s orbit crosses a debris field, it’s a meteor shower. Each debris field is left over by a comet.
The comet associated with the Lyrid shower is Comet Thatcher, which was discovered by Alfred Thatcher on April 5, 1861. While Singer says no one has seen the comet since, because it has such a long orbit around the sun, it will be close enough to see again in 2283. The Lyrid meteor shower is the only shower associated with the Comet Thatcher.
The Lyrid meteor shower this year will be more like a meteor trickle, with approximately one meteor visible every four to six minutes. There will be some walnut-sized meteors, called bolides, that will be brighter and produce longer visible trails, with mostly grape-sized and smaller meteors people can spot.
“The good news is that this year it falls on the new moon, so the sky will be really dark and that will aid in seeing the fainter meteors,” Singer says.
The Lyrid shower is something Singer recommends watching unassisted, without the use of binoculars or scopes which can limit your view of the night sky.
Singer mentions that every 60 years there seems to be an outburst of meteors due to how the earth’s gravitational field reshapes the debris field of a comet, so the next really spectacular Lyrid meteor shower will be in 2042.
