Lyrid meteor shower visible tonight

The annual Lyrid meteor shower will be visible to Sri Lanka tonight in the western sky, Space Scientist and Engineer Gihan Weerasekera said.

 

It can be seen along with the star pattern called Veena. At least 20 meteors per hour are expected to be visible to the naked eye. 

 

The Lyrids meteor shower lasts from about April 15 to April 29 each year.

 

The meteor shower will reach its maximum in the morning tomorrow, but it will be difficult to see because of the full moon.

 

The nearly full moon over the weekend will make it more difficult to see the meteor shower, but viewers can still see some, and it always helps to make the sky as dark as possible.

 

But the best time to watch the metor shower is between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. in the morning. 

 

The Lyrid meteor shower is a burst of meteor activity occurring around mid- to late-April.

 

Meteors are small chucks of debris left in the wake of certain celestial objects, like asteroids or comets. When the Earth passes through this trail of material, it scoops up a number of these pieces, which fall into the atmosphere.

 

These objects move extremely fast (about 15 km/s) compared to the relatively still atmosphere. In fact, they fall so fast that the air in front of them cannot get out of the way fast enough, instead getting rapidly squashed and heating up. This causes the surface of the meteor to reach temperatures as high as 1600°C, glowing brightly, which is visible as a short-lived streak of light in the sky.