Predawn April 24 and 25 — A Highlight of the Month: Venus, Saturn and the Moon pair up:
Low on the eastern horizon, brilliant Venus will be above Saturn and the waning Crescent Moon will be to their right on April 24 and will form a triangle with them on April 25. Mercury will be below and to the left of this celestial gathering. Binoculars will help to find Mercury and enhance your view these mornings. Try taking a smartphone/camera pic.
Now we can gear up for another sky show - the Lyrids Meteor Shower https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-lyrid-meteor-shower/ which is ongoing until April 29th but peaks on the night of April 21-22. From a dark sky site with no moon one can expect about a dozen Lyrids per hour. The shower has been known to produce an “outburst” of a 100 Lyrids an hour.
Each year at this time our planet encounters a debris stream of cometary dust made by Comet Thatcher. As Earth moves in its orbit around the Sun it collides with this debris stream and the cometary debris particles hit our atmosphere to become “shooting or falling stars”.
Traveling at 29 miles per second (110,000 miles per hour) these cometary bits hit the atmosphere 80 miles up and heat the atmosphere white hot which is what we see. Usually the size of a grain of sand they can also be as big as a marble. Speed plus size makes for a lot of “oohhs and aahhhs”.
You do not need any equipment or know how to enjoy the show - just find a place where you can put a lounge chair or blanket to see the sky. Starting at 10 p.m. in the northeast the constellation for which this meteor shower is named - Lyra - hangs low above the horizon and will rise higher as the night progresses. A meteor that is part of the shower can be traced back to Lyra. Sporadic meteors that are not part of the shower can be seen during the night as well.
The shower should improve after midnight and Lyrids can appear anywhere in the sky but looking straight up gives you the widest viewing area - this is where the lounge chair or blanket come in handy. The moon will interfere a bit with viewing the shower just before dawn.
If you are a city dweller you still may see the brightest Lyrids as long as you are not staring into a street light or nestled in amongst tall buildings. The view of the Lyrids is worth it from the suburbs as long as lights and obstructions are minimized as best you can.
Enjoy the shower with family, friends or your significant other. Some food and beverages are an added plus. Be sure to have extra clothing as it can get cool at night.
Weather is predicted to be cloudy https://wtop.com/weather/ during the peak so we will just have to see.
It is recommended that Aurora chasers check the latest Aurora forecast at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center Aurora Forecast Webpage https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental and get outside after dark equipped with their Smartphones and/or cameras.
You will need a clear view of the northern horizon that is hopefully free of bright lights. Try looking with your eyes to see if Aurora are visible. If you do not see any - or if you do - take an image with your Smartphone and/or camera - an exposure of several seconds is best.
Gateway’s HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost) is out of its transport container and in the cleanroom at the Northrop Grumman facility in Gilbert, Arizona. HALO will support Artemis astronauts visiting Gateway and function as a command and control hub for the lunar space station. https://go.nasa.gov/3G5IpVf
Our favorite time of the year is here! April is #CitizenScienceMonth, and we’re embarking on an incredible mission to achieve something amazing – #OneMillionActsOfScience! Through #CitizenScience, volunteers around the world help NASA solve the mysteries of the Universe, address practical problems, and protect life here on Earth. You’re invited to join this impactful effort. Let’s prove what’s possible when we come together! Explore opportunities to Do NASA Science with the projects below and then, make your contributions count toward our goal of doing One Million Acts of Science together.
