The Lyrid meteor shower, the first respectable meteor shower of the calendar year, runs from April 19-25 and peaks on April 22-23 each year. The Lyrids are not usually as spectacular as the more famous Perseids or Geminids which peak in August and December, respectively. But if you’re out late or up early during the shorter nights of April, look up for a few minutes and you might see a Lyrid streak by. And sometimes, the shower surprises to the upside.
The Lyrids appear to trace their paths back to a radiant about 10º southwest of the bright blue-white star Vega, which northern stargazers can see rising in the northeast by 10 p.m. in mid April. The radiant actually lies in what’s now the constellation Hercules, but the shower was named before the constellation boundaries were formalized in the early-20th century. From the southern hemisphere, the radiant of the Lyrids, and Vega itself, barely rise above the northern horizon, so fewer of the Lyrids are visible.
The Lyrid meteors are sandgrain-sized pieces of dust and ice. They are left over from the periodic Comet C/1861 Thatcher which last crossed Earth’s orbit on April 20, 1861. The comet returns to Earth every 415 years, so the Lyrids has been observed for thousands of years.
This meteor shower typically produces some 10-20 meteors per hour. The Perseids, by comparison, display about 60 per hour. Though occasionally, the Lyrids get a little frisky and approach 100 meteor per hour during the peak. In 1982 and 1922, observers noted some 90 meteors per hour. In 1803, the Lyrids produced a storm of some 700 meteors per hour. The same happened in 687 B.C. when Chinese stargazers noted “at midnight, stars dropped down like rain.” This was one of the earliest recorded sightings of a meteor shower.
Like most meteor showers, you don’t need any special equipment to enjoy it. Get a chair or a blanket, lie back, and look up. The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, so you don’t need to look towards the radiant.