Starwatch: Lyrids meteor shower returns to the skies – Guardian

The Lyrids are a meteor shower that get from the tail of the comet Thatcher.

Found by AE Thatcher in 1861, the comet is on a 422-year orbit of the solar and won’t be returning to the inner solar design unless 2283. Yearly between 15 and 29 April, the Earth encounters the mud particles that it has left slack, with the cease of project on the final occurring on the evening of 22 April, leading into the Twenty third. The chart shows the rely on looking north-east from London at 22.00 BST on 22 April. The meteors radiate from the save labelled Lyrids and can shoot in any route some distance flung from this level.

The shower in most cases affords between 5 and 20 meteors an hour, with most a first price brightness – magnitude 2 – but about a rare cases turning into out of the ordinary brighter “fireballs”. Each 60 years or so, the Earth hits a notably dense patch of the meteoroid movement and a Lyrid outburst takes save. In 1803, astronomers recorded as much as 700 meteors an hour. The most most as much as date outburst changed into in 1982, so one other will not be anticipated for about a decades but.

From the southern hemisphere, the constellation will reach its absolute most sensible level within the northern sky at about 2am.