The peak of the world’s oldest known meteor showers will grace the skies this week. The Lyrid meteor shower is active from 16-25 April but is at its height on Monday night.
The chart shows the view looking east from London at midnight as 21 April becomes 22 April. The radiant (the point on the sky from which the meteors appear to originate, and here labelled Lyrids), is found near the border of Lyra, the lyre, and Hercules, the hero. Conveniently, it is rather near to the bright star Vega.
Away from street lights, observers can expect to see about 15 to 20 bright and fast meteors an hour. They tend to hit the atmosphere while travelling at about 48km a second.
Although the Lyrids are not the most prolific meteor shower in the calendar, they can occasionally produce individually bright fireballs. Every 60 years or so, the shower is also prone to a sudden outburst when hundreds of meteors become visible.
One such outburst was captured in the court records of ancient China. In 687BC, the sky became so full of meteors that records state that “stars fell like rain”. This listing makes the Lyrids the oldest known meteor shower.
The shower is more difficult to see from the southern hemisphere, where the radiant only rises after midnight.
