FREMONT, CA – One thing we’ve learned over the past year in Fremont is the enjoyment of simple pleasures like nights spent under a canopy of stars. It’s even better than fireballs flaming across the sky – the brighter than normal shooting stars starting the Lyrid meteor shower this week are known for it.
There hasn’t been much more than the usual to starve into the night sky since the Quadrantid meteor shower that ushered in 2021. But that changes this month with the Lyrids, which begin Friday and last for two weeks until Friday, April 30th.
The Lyrids overlap with another meteor shower, the Eta Aquariids (sometimes spelled Aquarids), which will sprinkle fast-moving meteors into the morning sky before their peak next month, and the first of three consecutive supermoons rises on April 27.
Going outside the morning of Thursday, April 22 around sunset – it’s about 4:08 in Fremont – the Lyrid Meteorite Series is a perfect way to start your Earth Day celebration. Another good reason to wait until the early hours of the morning to stare at stars: A full moon of 68 percent will interfere with viewing in the evening and early at night.
At its peak, the Lyrids deliver 10 to 15 meteors per hour reliably. It’s not much, but they’ve called the “Old Faithful of Meteor Showers” by Space.com because their peak usually lasts several hours.
And they are known for a large number of fireballs – meteors with persistent traces of ionized gas that glow a few seconds after the asterisk passes.
However, do not wait until the peak starts looking for meteors. According to Earthsky.org, shooting stars will start picking up in intensity next Monday and Tuesday. And to see a few on the morning of the 23rd is out of the question.
The Lyrids, among the oldest known meteoric moods, are produced by particles dumped by Comet 1861 G1 Thatcher, which last moved through the inner solar system in 1861 and will only be back in 2276.
As with all meteoric showers, it’s best to go outside the city lights outside the country to get the best views unless it’s dark.
Take a lounge chair with you so you can get a wide view of the sky, and do not forget to pack a blanket to keep you warm during this heavenly distraction.
Space.com offers this helpful tip for locating the Lyrids:
‘The paths of these meteors, when extended backwards, appear to deviate from a place in the sky about 7 degrees southwest (bottom right) of the brilliant blue-white star Vega in the small constellation Lyra (hence the name’ Lyrids’).
“Your clenched fist, held at arm’s length, covers about 10 degrees of the sky. The radiant tip is actually on the border between Lyra and the adjacent dim, outstretched constellation Hercules. It looks like Vega from your local time around 9 p.m. northeast, but by four o’clock it had almost climbed above a point in the sky. ‘
We will have more as the Eta Aquariids approach, but the month-long shower that lasts from April 27 to May 28 reaches a peak of May 4-6 with between 10 and 20 meteors per hour. The meteorite of the Eta Aquarius is fast and produces a high percentage of persistent trains, but few fireballs.
April 27 is also the first of three consecutive supermoons. The full moon in April is known as the full pink moon, the emerging grass moon, the growing moon, the egg moon or the fish moon.
As NASA explains, a supermoon occurs when the moon’s orbit is closest (perigee) to Earth, at the same time it is full. The proximity to Earth – keep in mind that our planet and moon are still 226,000 apart at this point – makes the moon look a little brighter and larger than usual.