Additional Shooting Stars: Lyrid Squadron Tops | internal

The Lyrids meteor shower peaks on Sunday. Although clouds will move over our country next night, according to weather forecaster Raymond Claassen, it won’t be a closed cloud cover. “So it’s possible to see something when it’s scanned,” he says. To observe as much of the planetarium as possible, he recommends lying down on a lawn chair. “The nights can still be chilly, so dress warmly if you’re going to be sitting still for a long time.”

The best time to stare at the sky is around four in the morning. The chance of spotting shooting stars is greater if you look to the east in a dark place. On the night from Sunday to Monday, there are also more shooting stars than usual. Cloud fields could then throw a wrench into the works again, Klassen warns.

According to him, we should not expect large numbers of meteors (meteors). Lyrids are a “modest swarm” that are most active on average once every 60 years. “Meteors are moving across the sky at about 47 kilometers per second,” the weatherman explains. “The moon this year is not a problem because it is only 10 percent illuminated and during the zenith it is already below the horizon.”

the to want It appears to have originated in the constellation of the Lyre, named after the portable, lyre-like instrument of the ancient Greek musician and poet Orpheus. The constellation is small in stature, standing high in the dome of the late sky, more than 60 degrees above the southeastern horizon.

The meteor shower is the result of Comet C1861 G1 Thatcher. It travels around the Sun in 415 years, which makes it a long-period comet. Lyrids were spotted by Chinese astronomers about 2,700 years ago.