After last week gifted us the pink supermoon, which resulted in me standing in the middle of my street in my pjs, gawking at the moon, and taking extremely blurry photos of that Big Pink Binch, the sky is set to put on another show this week. Eyes to the skies this week, there’s a meteor shower happening on hump day.
Hell yeah, fuck the TV off for a bit, go outside and look at the stars.
In one of the oldest shows known to humankind, the Lyrids meteor shower will once again put on a show in the night’s sky over Australia on Wednesday night. Apparently these showers date back well over 2000 years, and come around every April for a bit of a fizz across the sky. Or, more accurately, it’s the time of year when Earth passes through the dust and debris left behind the Comet Thatcher, who is on a 415-year long orbit.
Nature’s fireworks, they call ’em.
The Lyrids typically show off up above the southern hemisphere between April 16 and 25, but astronomy-loving experts believe late night on April 22 is when the shower will be at its brightest, and most visible to the naked eye.
It might be a bit of a late one for you – the shower is predicted to kick off around 11pm on the east coast – so it’ll definitely be another case of me standing out on the grass outside my house in my pyjamas.
So cross your fingers and toes that it’s not an overcast night this Wednesday and you’ll be able to nip outside when the time is right to catch a few shooting stars. If previous years of the Lyrids shower is anything to go by, you’ll probably catch somewhere up to 25 zoomies happening – but maybe it could revert back to the peak of the 1982 shower, where one astronomer saw 90 Lyrids in an hour.
May I suggest you queue up Bag Raiders‘ ‘Shooting Stars‘ for your meteor shower viewing. Here’s one I prepared earlier for you all.
https://youtu.be/bWr2rZtV0Kk
