It’s been a long time between meteor showers, but now the lyrids have now ended the drought of meteors in our night sky. Get out under the night sky and check them out!
Meteor Showers Return – The Lyrids
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Ian_Maclean]Ian Maclean
The Autumn (or fall) Lyrid Shower Has Historical Resonances
It’s been a long three months for skywatchers in the Southern Hemisphere, with the height of summer cutting down on viewing time. As Autumn (fall) approaches, we’re getting closer to one of the oldest observed meteor showers on the planet – the Lyrid shower.
Because this shower (like all meteor showers, a remnant of a comet – ostensibly comet Thatcher, in this case) comes in from just over the ecliptic, it’s visible on the far Northern horizon to us, with a peak that happens sometime between April 19th and the 22nd, with some meteors coming through as early as the 12th and some coming as late as May 3rd.
This shower may not be tied to a single cometary remnant, or the cometary remnant may have an odd orbit; roughly every 60 years, the Lyrids put on a very large show, going from 6 to 10 meteors per hour up to a hundred or more per hour. The most spectacular meteor shower event in modern astronomy history appears to have been a Lyrid shower from April 1803, which, in the Northern Hemisphere had so many meteors over the Eastern seaboard of the United States that it as thought (in some parts) that the word was coming to an end. Lots of drawings of the night sky and illustrations of the event exist, including enough meteors in the sky to cause multiple shadows of people standing on the ground.
Because of the pericyclic times of the Lyrid shower, and its periodic outbursts, mathematical calculations of its orbital elements are tricky. The “roughly every 60 year” rule for the Lyrids has been used to backtrack it to probable events recorded as far back as 638 BC, making it the oldest recorded astronomical event on record.
One of the interesting confluences of the Lyrids is that they may be the remnants of more than one comet; comet Thatcher has a 417 year orbital period, and the Lyrids stream has peaks of roughly every 60 years…and super peaks that we don’t have a long enough baseline on to determine their frequency. This points to the Lyrids being spawned by a possible cometary collision or calving, where the cometary nucleus split into two parts – explosively – with one having a more eccentric orbit than the other, and a periodic confluence of the two elements creating large bursts.
While we’re pretty certain that this won’t be a “once very 60 years” burst (the last one was in 1982, and we’re not due for another one until roughly 2042), the Lyrids are a fairly reliable meteor shower for observations; though with the time of the year, you’ll want to be up around 2 to 4 AM to see them from where you live.
Ian Maclean – Author, Presenter and Science Show host Homepages: http://www.nightskysecrets.com and http://www.askthescienceguru.com Discover the hidden secrets of the night sky for yourself.
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Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Meteor-Showers-Return—The-Lyrids&id=2219216] Meteor Showers Return – The Lyrids
