Lyrid Meteor shower viewing

The annual Lyrid meteor shower is active each year from about April 16 to 25. In 2020, we expect the shower to pick up beginning late at night on Sunday, April 19, 2020, probably peaking in the predawn hours on Wednesday, April 22. The follow morning (April 23) might be good too, if you’re game. This shower comes after a months-long meteor drought that always falls between early January and April’s Lyrid shower each year. There are no major meteor showers during those months, as you can see by looking at EarthSky’s meteor shower guide. By April, many meteor-watchers are itching to get going! So – though they produce only 10 to 15 meteors per hour at their peak – the Lyrids are always welcome!

No matter where you are on Earth, the best time to watch is between midnight and dawn. You’ll want to watch in a dark country sky. Keep reading to find some tips for watching the 2020 Lyrids.

Tip #1: Learn about this shower’s radiant point. If you trace the paths of all the Lyrid meteors backward, they seem to radiate from the constellation Lyra the Harp, near the brilliant star Vega. This is only a chance alignment, for these meteors burn up in the atmosphere about 60 miles (100 km) up. Meanwhile, Vega lies trillions of times farther away at 25 light-years.

Yet it’s from Vega’s constellation Lyra that the Lyrid meteor shower takes its name.

All you need to know about a meteor shower’s radiant point is its rising time. That’s because the shower starts (for the most part) after the radiant rises. It’s best (generally speaking) when the radiant is highest in the sky. Around the Lyrids’ peak, Vega rises – in the northeast – around 9 to 10 p.m. local time (the time on your clock, from all Northern Hemisphere locations). It climbs upward through the night, is fairly high by midnight, and is highest just before dawn.

That doesn’t mean you should rule out the late evening hours, though. Late evening might be the best time to catch an earthgrazer, which is a slow-moving and long-lasting meteor that travels horizontally across your sky.

Chief Meteorologist,

Dean Wysocki