Lyrid meteor shower set to dazzle stargazers on Saturday with up to 18 meteors an hour

By William On Apr 19, 2023

Stargazers are in for a treat this weekend, as the Lyrid meteor shower returns for its annual dance across the night sky.

The celestial spectacle is expected to peak on Sunday at 02:06 BST (21:06 EDT on Saturday) with up to 18 shooting stars passing overhead every hour.

Meteor showers, or shooting stars, are caused when bits of debris known as meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, creating streaks of light.

The Lyrid Shower takes its name from the constellation Lyra, where the meteors seem to come from, but they actually have nothing to do with these stars.

These particular meteors are bits of cosmic debris that fall from the Thatcher comet along its orbit.

Meteor showers are caused when bits of debris known as meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere, burn up and create streaks of light. Multiple exposures were combined to produce this image of the Lyrid meteor shower over Niederhollabrunn, Austria in April 2020

Despite its trail of debris being visible from Earth, this comet is quite far from us and orbits the sun only once every 415 years.

HOW DO I SEE THE LYRID METEOR SHOWER?

The celestial spectacle is expected to peak in the early hours of April 23 and will be visible across the sky.

The best place to see the Lyrid meteor shower is in the Northern Hemisphere, although it is visible from all over the world.

Rural areas away from city lights will give a clearer view.

The best time to catch these ‘shooting stars’ is before sunrise, when the moon is down.

Hopeful stargazers should look east for the best chance of a shower.

Lyrid meteors should be the brightest lights in the sky, aside from the moon.

They leave smoky traces that can last for several minutes.

The meteoroids themselves are also no bigger than pebbles, but they can reach speeds of about 110,000 miles per hour (180,000 km/h) when they fall.

In doing so, they crush the air in front of them, causing it to heat up to temperatures of 2,900 °F (1,600 °C) and glow.

While the Lyrids aren’t the brightest of rain — the Perseuds and Geminids both outshine them — they’re among the first to be observed by humans, having first been spotted by Chinese astronomers in 687 BC.

The Lyrid meteor shower can be seen from anywhere on Earth, but the Northern Hemisphere has the best views, especially rural areas away from city lights.

As with all night sky phenomena, in order to see the Lyrids it is necessary to find a dark place with an unobstructed view of the sky.

It’s likely to be an overcast night across most of the UK, but clearer along the south and east coasts, according to the Met Office’s cloud cover map.

However, clouds will spread over Bournemouth and Norwich as we approach sunrise on Sunday morning.

The number of meteors people can see depends on several things, from the time of night to the level of backlight.

A clear sky will drown out the fainter ones, making them much harder to see.

This year, however, the Lyrids started on April 14 and peak in the early hours of April 23, just after new moon, so conditions are favorable.

To pinpoint what the meteors are passing through, locate the brightest star in the constellation Lyra to find what astronomers call the “shining one.”

This is the point in the sky from which the meteors become visible to us on Earth.

The Lyrid shower takes its name from the constellation Lyra, where the meteors seem to come from, but they actually have nothing to do with these stars

Cloud cover at 1:00am BST on Sunday in the UK, which may obscure views of the Lyrids. This will extend over the south and east coasts as we approach sunrise

The Lyrids are pieces of cosmic debris that fall from the Thatcher Comet along its orbit

The radiant point will rise in the east just after midnight and then more and more meteors will be visible above the horizon.

However, the sky will also brighten as we approach sunrise around 05:50 BST, meaning it will be more difficult to see the shower.

The shooting stars appear as sideways streaks in the sky because Earth moves through Comet Thatcher’s debris field as it orbits the sun.

If you miss the Lyrids, you still have a chance to catch a shooting star on May 6, when the Eta Aquariid meteor shower reaches its peak.

This produces up to 50 shooting stars per hour, which will travel into Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 148,000 mph (240,000 km/h).

Named because their radiant appears to be in the constellation of Aquarius, the Eta Aquariids were created by debris from Halley’s Comet.

In July, stargazers will be treated to the first supermoon of 2023, when Earth’s natural satellite appears much larger and brighter than on any other night.

Supermoons occur because the moon orbits the Earth on an elliptical path instead of a circular one.

If you miss the Lyrids, you still have a chance to catch a shooting star on May 6, when the Eta Aquariid meteor shower reaches its peak. Pictured: Eta Aquarid meteor shower taken from the NASA All Sky Fireball Network station in Tullahoma, Tennessee, in May 2013

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ASTEROID, A COMET AND A METEORITE?

A asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.

a comet is a rock covered with ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system.

a meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns.

This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small that they evaporate into the atmosphere.

If one of these meteoroids hits Earth, it will become one meteorite.

Meteors, meteoroids, and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets.

For example, if Earth passes through the tail of a comet, much of the debris in the atmosphere burns up and forms a meteor shower.