Moon and the planets, Lyrid meteors next week

Did you catch the moonrise with this planets this morning? The moon was very close to Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. 

I took this image from my backyard in Pennsylvania.

The moon will not be centered as nicely tomorrow morning, but it will be close to Mars and Saturn. The moon tracks right to left as we see it in the sky, despite the appearance to move from left to right, which is caused by Earth’s rotation. Because of its movement orbiting the Earth, it rises about an hour later every day. 

Just as the moon reaches its new phase, we have the first significant meteor shower in about three months! The Lyrid meteor shower peaks the night of April 21/22. The moon will not be a factor, so we should see all this shower has to offer, weather dependent of course. 

The Lyrid meteor shower actually produces a decent amount of meteors on the three nights surround the peak, so it’s worth checking out from April 20 until April 23! 

The shower will probably produce around 15 meteors per hour during those three nights. However, on the peak night, meteor rates could spike for a few hours, and as many as 90 meteors per hour are possible! 

Here is an early look at sky cover during the peak night. An active weather pattern is expected across the country. There will likely be a large storm system moving from the Plains towards the Southeast. 

Computer model forecast for sky cover around midnight during the peak night.

The meteors radiate from near the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra. Lyra becomes high in the sky in the late evening and is then nearly overhead through dawn. Overall, the best viewing will be after midnight, but you can see some meteors during the evening as well. The Lyrid meteors are triggered by Comet C/1861 G1 (Thatcher). It only orbits the sun once every 415 years. It won’t be near the sun again until the year 2280!