Meteor season is back with the annual Lyrid meteor shower. The first three months of most years represent a relative dry spell for night sky watchers, as typically not much happens between the Quadrantid meteor shower in early January and the Lyrids. They signal a welcome return of the chance to venture out in the evening amid mild temperatures, and they officially became active this week.

But that's just the beginning. The Lyrids build to a peak on the evening of April 21 into the early morning hours of April 22. If you can't get out that night or the weather doesn't cooperate where you are, one night before or after the peak is also expected to present a pretty good viewing opportunity as well.

The Lyrids don't produce a whole lot of meteors, perhaps 10 to 15 per hour, but are more likely to include bright, dramatic fireballs than other major showers. Every few decades we get an outburst during the Lyrids that boosts the rate up to about 100 per hour. That's not predicted to happen in 2021, but such things are also notoriously hard to predict.

The source of the Lyrids is the debris cloud left behind by a comet named C/1861 G1 Thatcher that was last seen in the 19th century and won't pass through the inner solar system again for more than two centuries. Each year, though, our planet drifts through the dust cloud it left behind on previous visits. Little space pebbles and other bits of dust and debris collide with our atmosphere and burn up high above us, producing those fleeting little light shows so many are willing to stay up late or wake up early to catch.

How to watch Lyrid Meteor Shower
How to watch Lyrids Meteor Shower
How to watch Lyrid Meteor Shower USA
Lyrid Meteor USA
Lyrid Meteor US
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Lyrids Meteor USA
Lyrids Meteor US
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When is the Lyrid meteor shower? After December's Geminid meteor shower there's a long gap to the Lyrids, which occur each year between April 16-30. The peak night of activity is expected to be Wednesday/Thursday, April 21/22, 2021, but the Lyrids tend to produce good rates of shooting stars for about three nights.

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What is the Lyrid meteor shower?
It’s an annual, medium strength meteor shower caused by Earth busting through a trail of dust and debris left in the inner Solar System by a comet called C/1861 G1 Thatcher. It’s a long period comet that loops around the Sun every 415 years, and it’s not due back in the inner Solar System until the year 2283.

You can expect to see about 18 shooting stars per hour, each one traveling at 30 miles/48km per second, but the real attraction of this meteor shower isn’t the number of “shooting stars,” but their intensity—“fireballs.”

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