The Lyrid meteor shower started from April 16 and lasts until the 25th and it peaks before dawn on April 22, 2018 (night of April 21) when about 10-20 meteors are expected per hour.
Witness it for free at San Francisco Bay Area this Saturday, April 21, from 11:59 pm until 6:00 am.
In 2018, the peak of this shower – which tends to come in a burst and usually lasts for less than a day with little or no interference from the slender waning crescent moon. The greatest number of meteors usually fall during the few hours before dawn. All in all, the Lyrid meteor shower prospects look pretty good for 2018, though meteor showers are notorious for their fickle and not totally predictable nature.
Try watching on April 21 and 23, too. The light of the waxing moon won’t greatly interfere with 2018’s Lyrid shower, because it’ll set before the peak viewing hours.
The Lyrids meteor shower is April’s “shooting stars” — meteors that tend to be bright and often leave trails. The Lyrids are known for uncommon surges that can sometimes bring the rate up to 100 per hour. Those rare outbursts are not easy to predict, but they’re one of the reasons the tantalizing Lyrids are worth checking out.
The radiant for this shower is in the constellation Lyra, which rises in the northeast at about 10 pm on April evenings.
