Monday, April 19, 2010

The Lyrid Meteor Shower


Every year, the Lyrid meteor shower takes place in April and I remember one year camping out in the back yard on a sleeping bag and watching the show in the sky, it was a lot of fun and very memorable. From the Space.com:

Anyone who enjoys watching the sky for "shooting stars" will have an opportunity to observe an old and reliable meteor display over the next several days: the April Lyrids. The best time to watch will be for a night or two around the peak, April 22
.
Faithful meteor shower The Lyrids are an annual display of fairly fast meteors that may be seen any night from April 16 to 25: they are above one-half of their maximum in numbers for about a day or two centered on the date of their peak activity.This year, the peak is predicted to fall during the daylight hours (for America and Europe) on April 22. After the gibbous moon sets at about 2:30 a.m. local daylight time that morning, observers near latitude 40 degrees north will still have about 90 minutes of dark sky to watch for the Lyrids before dawn interferes. The southern states are more favored because the Moon sets earlier and twilight begins later.

The show is even better if you camp out in the mountains, camping is fun with the right crowd, a campfire, s´mores, the whole works!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

No comments:

Post a Comment