RIYADH: After nearly 16 weeks of quiet skies since the last good opportunity to catch sight of a decent meteor shower, the wait is almost over for astronomers and amateur stargazers in Saudi Arabia.
Dozens of named meteor showers recur annually at approximately the same time each year, 10 of which are generally considered particularly worth watching. The most recent, the Quadrantid shower, peaked in early January and there has not been much activity since then.
But the Noor Astronomical Society said on Tuesday that the Lyrid meteor shower is expected to peak in the skies over Saudi Arabia and the wider Arab world overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
The Lyrids is one of the oldest recorded meteor showers, the society noted, with historical records indicating it was first documented more than 2,700 years ago, in 687 B.C., by Chinese astronomers.
Issa Al-Ghafili, president of the society, said that the shower will be viewable from midnight until dawn with the naked eye, with no need for telescopes or other advanced equipment, and is best observed from open locations well away from light pollution.
The source of the Lyrid shower is particles of dust from Thatcher, a comet discovered in April 1861 by amateur astronomer A.E Thatcher, that is next expected to return to Earth’s vicinity in about 2283.
“When you observe a Lyrid meteor, you are watching a tiny piece of Comet Thatcher entering our atmosphere and vaporizing at an average speed of 50 kilometers per second,” Abouazza El-Mhamdi, an associate professor in the physics and astronomy department at King Saud University’s College of Science, told Arab News.
“The shower happens each April as Earth moves through the dusty trail left by this long-period comet that takes about 415 years to complete one orbit.
“This annual celestial display interestingly peaks around Earth Day, on April 22, a fitting reminder that our planet exists within a dynamic, interconnected cosmos where the sky above and the ground beneath are forever linked.”
The shower gets the name Lyrid from the fact that the paths of the meteors, if extended back, appear to diverge from a spot in the sky about 9 degrees to the lower right of the brilliant bluish-white star Vega, which is in the constellation of Lyra, the Lyre.
The average Lyrid shower produces about 15 to 20 meteors an hour at its peak. Sometimes, however, activity intensifies and it can produce up to 100 meteors an hour in what is called an “outburst” but it is difficult to predict when that might happen.
For about a day either side of peak activity, about five to 10 Lyrids can usually be seen each hour by an observer under clear skies. The best time to observe the Lyrids is in the pre-dawn hours, when the shower’s radiant (the point in the night sky from which meteors appear to originate, caused by the perspective of Earth moving through the debris stream) is at its highest in the sky. As the morning progresses, the radiant continues to climb but the approaching sunrise and brightening sky increasingly hinder visibility.
Fortunately, the moon will not interfere with this year’s display, El-Mhamdi said, as it will set after midnight and leave the sky dark for peak viewing.
