by Skywatchers will finally be able to enjoy the thrill of spotting “shooting stars” again this week as the April Lyrids meteor shower arrives after a three-month meteor drought.
For those who enjoy gazing at the night sky within sight of meteors, commonly referred to as “shooting” or “shooting” stars, it’s been pretty quiet for the past few months. There are many meteor showers that occur throughout the year, but only ten are recognized as the ‘major’ meteor showers. The last such shower to have taken place was the Quadrantid meteor shower January 3. Since then, there have been no other noteworthy meteor showers to look for.
Finally, after 109 days — more than 15 weeks — we will once again have the opportunity to enjoy the nocturnal spectacle with the April Lyrids.
Related: How to photograph meteors and meteor showers
The Lyrid meteor shower has been known for millennia. Records of Chinese chronicles show that they appear regularly from at least 687 BC.
In his long book, Meteor Showers and their Parent Comets, (Cambridge University Press, 2006), author Peter Jenniskens noted that the annual Lyrid shower “has always been my favorite. After the low rates in the cold months of February and March , this downpour is the proverbial swallow of spring for observers in the northern hemisphere.”
The 2022 version of the Lyrids is expected to peak Friday (April 22) in the morning. The radiant – the emanation point of these meteors – is about 6 degrees southwest of brilliant blue Vega star in the constellation Lyra, which rises in the northeast sky in the late evening and is virtually overhead at dawn. The moon, one day before the last quarterhowever, will somewhat interfere with meteor light.
Any meteor whose trajectory, extended backwards, passes within a few degrees of Vega is likely to be a Lyrid. The Lyrids are rich in faint meteors, sometimes with bright ones. They are considered one of the weakest of the main screens. Compared to August Perseids and december Geminidswhich can produce several dozen meteor sightings in a waking hour, the Lyrids typically only produce about 10-20 meteors per hour at most.
Usually this downpour is above a quarter of peak strength two days before and after peak, so if the weather in your area is unsettled on the morning of the 22nd, you still have a chance to catch a few Lyrids a day or two before. or after the time of their peak activity.
But there is always the small chance of a surprise.
1803: A meteor storm
The April Lyrids sometimes provided spectacular spectacles, as in 687 BC. when Chinese records said “stars fell like rain” and at least a dozen other times since. The story is often told of how the people of Richmond, Va., were driven out of bed by the fire bell on the morning of April 20, 1803. The fire that broke out in the armory was quickly extinguished, but it gave locals a chance to see meteors falling in large numbers from all parts of the sky.
Another account was a letter, published in the Raleigh, North Carolina, Register:
“We, the undersigned…being on Wednesday evening, April 20, at a fishing party, and returning home about 1 a.m., were alarmed by the appearance of a starburst; the whole hemisphere until like the extension of the horizon, seemed to be illuminated; the meteors did not keep any particular direction, but seemed to move in all directions. We observed the phenomenon for space perhaps for half an hour with astonishment, during which period no intermission appeared. We distinctly heard a whistle in the air, but heard no report. The above statements can be taken as fact.” (Signed by four men).
Other similar accounts came from New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Delaware.
The meteoric explosion of 1803 was completely unexpected. Very little was known about meteors in the 18th and 19th centuries, except for the slight increase in their numbers each year at the beginning of August. Today we know that the ancestor of the Lyrid meteors is Comet Thatcher which surrounds the Sun in an orbit of approximately 415 years and was last seen in the spring of 1861.
Other surprises
A brief burst of 100 meteors per hour was reported in 1922. In 1982, rates unexpectedly reached 90 for a single hour, and a staggering 180 to 300 per hour for a few minutes. “It is indeed possible that many past Lyrid outbursts were missed simply because of observational lapses,” writes Paul Roggermans in Handbook for Visual Meteor Observations (Sky Publishing Corporation, 1989).
So maybe it wouldn’t hurt to set the alarm clock for 3 or 4 a.m. on April 22 for a brief peek out the window, despite the moonlight.
Hey . . . We never know.
Upcoming Attractions
The next major meteor show is scheduled for the first week of May, the Eta Aquarids. This shower is one of the most popular annual events for meteor watchers in the Southern Hemisphere; one of the best annual showers. Unfortunately, northern observers are handicapped by the low altitude of this shower’s radiant, coupled with the onset of dawn dusk just as the radiant appears. The meteoroids produced by this shower can be attributed to Halley’s Comet. The Eta Aquarids 2022 peak is scheduled for the morning of May 6.
But there’s a second meteor shower in May that could very well end up being the best of the year.
An “all or nothing at all” meteor display
Few people have heard of the Tau Herculid shower. Normally it does not produce more than a few meteors during a whole night’s watch. But things changed dramatically when, at the end of 1995, the core of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (the parent body of the shower) fragmented. Now a number of meteor dynamics have confirmed what I proposed last year: A stream of particles ejected during the comet’s disturbance could produce a dramatic explosion in late May 2022.
This prediction, however, is uncertain because no one knows for sure how fast the expulsion of fresh produce comet the dust left the 73P decay nucleus. However, we all agree that whatever happens will take place around 1 a.m. EDT (0500 GMT) on May 31. This is a beautiful time for the southern half of North America, including virtually all of the contiguous United States (evening twilight will interfere for the Pacific Northwest and virtually all of Canada). Even better, the light of the moon one day past its new phase will not interfere.
The cloud of cometary debris will hit Earth at a very slow speed of 10 miles (16 kilometers) per second, which would normally produce very faint meteors. However, the radiation from the shower will be high in the sky for the Americas, and the meteoroid swarm could prove dense enough to produce a spectacular visual spectacle nonetheless.
Space.com will provide more details on this potential new meteor display in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
Joe Rao is an instructor and guest speaker at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes on astronomy for natural history journalthe Farmers Almanac and other publications. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
