Notes plucked from the Lyre

The Lyrid meteor shower should be at its peak in the night of April 22-23. It will not be spoiled by moonlight: the Moon was new on April 20 and so will be below the horizon.

Here is the group of four illustrations about the Lyrids from page 132 of Astronomical Calendar 2023.

As the four diagrams show, this meteor stream, derived from comet Thatcher of 1861, comes down from the north across Earth’s orbit, and the meteors appear to radiate from an area between Hercules, Lyra, and Boötes; this radiant rises from the north-east horizon around 10 PM (for our north-hemisphere countries) and slopes up to overhead by 4 AM. If your sky conditions are good, you may count up to 18 meteors per hour, though there have been a few much greater outbursts in the past.

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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format.  You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.  One way: right-click, and choose “View image” or “Open image in new tab”, then enlarge.  Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it.  On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers).  Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.

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