Tonight presents another good night for the 2012 Lyrid meteor shower, from late night Saturday (April 21) until dawn Sunday (April 22). Usually, the hour before dawn is best, regardless of your location on the globe. The Lyrids are generally a modest shower, offering perhaps 10 to 20 meteors per hour. Since it’s radiant point – the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to radiate – is fairly far north, it’s better seen from the Northern Hemisphere than from the southern part of Earth’s globe. With no moon to ruin the show, 2012 is the time to watch the Lyrids. Sometimes, the Lyrids can surprise you by producing several times the usual number of meteors – but you never know.
Did you see any meteors last night or this morning? If so, tell us in the comments below and let us know your location.
The radiant point for tonight's Lyrid meteor shower is near the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra. They rise in the northeast in late evening in April.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope recently captured this image of the star Vega, located 25 light years away in the constellation Lyra. Spitzer was able to detect the heat radiation from the cloud of dust around the star and found that the debris disc is much larger than previously thought. Image Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
EarthSky’s top 10 tips for meteor-watchers
The chart at the top of this page shows the constellation Lyra the Harp, radiant point for this meteor shower. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, Lyra rises over your north-northeastern horizon around 10 to 11 p.m. tonight. What is a radiant point? If you see a meteor tonight, you can trace its path backwards to find that it radiated from the constellation Lyra. Yet you don’t have to know how to identify Lyra – or even know its direction in the sky – to see a meteor in this annual shower. Meteors often don’t become visible until they are 30 degrees or so from their radiant point. In other words, the meteors will appear in any and all parts of the sky after Lyra ascends over the horizon in late evening.
It’s fun to find a meteor shower’s radiant point, though, and Lyra is easy to spot. The constellation Lyra is easy to see because it’s small and compact. Many people see it as a little triangle set on top of an oblique parallelogram.
If you’re standing out there looking, you might also try checking out some of the stars in Lyra. The constellation is dominated by the brilliant star Vega. Vega is sometimes called the Harp Star.
Vega is near Lyrid meteor shower radiant
This tiny but prominent constellation represents a lyre, an ancient musical instrument that is essentially a small harp. In Greek mythology, Lyra represents the lyre or harp of the musician Orpheus. It was said that when Orpheus played this instrument, neither mortal nor god could turn away.
There are several other interesting sights for small telescopes within the constellation Lyra. One is the star Epsilon Lyrae, just to the lower left of Vega on our chart. This is the famed double-double star, which means that in binoculars it appears as a double star, but each of those stars also appears as a double in a telescope. In other words, the single point we see with the eye as Epsilon Lyrae is at least four stars.
Epsilon Lyrae: Famous “double-double” star
M57, the Ring Nebula. Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)
Click here to expand image above
Another interesting object is M57, the Ring Nebula, located between the Beta and Gamma stars of Lyra. These are the two stars farthest from Vega, to the lower right on the chart. M57 is roughly halfway between them, and appears as a faint ellipse – like a smoke ring – in a telescope. It is a planetary nebula, the remant of a sun-like star that shed its outer layers and died.
Bottom line: The peak of the 2012 Lyrid meteor shower is tonight. Watch from late night April 21 until before dawn April 22. The shower typically produces about 10-20 meteors per hour. There’s no moonlight to obscure this year’s Lyrid meteor shower, but you will need a dark sky, away from city lights. See if you can find the star Vega, and its constellation Lyra the Harp. The meteors radiate from Lyra: hence their name.
I saw two meteorites low in the north last night within ten minutes of 1300 Zulu here in Brisbane, Australia 27 29 S 153 8 E
Weather was clear and the sky darker than usual for the suburbs.
[...] Finally, there will be a meteor shower over the weekend. the good news is that the moon will be new, which means that the night will be as dark as possible and we should have clear, chilly skies out there. So the viewing is set up to be good. the bad news is that this meteor shower is not the most prolific in producing things to look at. Here is some general information about meteor showers and more specific information about the Lyrids. [...]
i saw, at two differnt, times what looked like meteors, but i’m not sure. it was in the afternoon. and the other one was early morning. the fisrt one was a bright white light and turned. red before it disapeared. the other one was just a streek bright light,looked real close. .
David, without more information I could only guess at what you saw. Meteors actually can occur all the time, even in daylight. Right now there is a short video of one seen at sunrise and through clouds in Tennessee on the Spaceweather.com website. While observing meteors in daylight is fairly rare, it is certainly not unheard of. There also are some satellites that occasionally make bright flare of light for a few seconds, typicaly longer than meteors. They are called Iridium satellites. Another, more remote possibility, is that you saw a bit of returning space junk. If it didnt’ move, it could have been a jet contrail reflecting in sunlight. I just don’t know.