Moonlit Meteors This Weekend

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April showers are supposed to bring May flowers, according to the well-known school yard rhyme. But there's a shower coming up this April that won't advance the cause of Spring one bit -- it's the Lyrid meteor shower. While the Lyrids may not encourage flowers to bloom, there will be a modest sky show on the morning of April 22 when 10 to 15 meteors per hour shoot out of the constellation Lyra.

"Unfortunately there's going to be a nearly full moon this year on April 22nd," said Dr. Frank Six, an astronomer at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "That'll make it hard to see faint meteors. Still, it might be worth staying up for if you're an enthusiastic star gazer."

Most meteor lovers would probably agree that the Lyrids merit watching simply because it's been so long since the last major shower. That was back in January 2000 when the Quadrantid meteor shower unleashed nearly 60 shooting stars per hour. Since then the meteor rate has been low.

All meteor showers are caused by dust particles from comets. The comet itself doesn't need to be anywhere nearby. These occasional icy visitors to the inner solar system leave a long trail of debris behind as they pass by the Sun. If our planet happens to pass through one of these debris streams, tiny dust particles called meteoroids burn up in our atmosphere producing a streak of light. All of the well-known annual meteor showers, like the Leonids and Perseids, as well as the Lyrids, are associated with long-lasting cometary debris streams that intersect Earth's orbit.

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