With the big solar eclipse now behind us, all eyes will be turned to a different type of sky show this spring — meteor showers. As the weather warms up, the 2024 meteor shower season will be ramping up, starting with a major meteor shower on tap for late April.
The season will kick off with the Lyrid meteor shower — with some shooting stars becoming visible as early as Monday night, April 15. But the shower is expected to reach its peak and generate its highest number of shooting stars during the late-night hours on April 22 into the pre-dawn hours on April 23, astronomy experts say.
Even though it’s not as dazzling as the annual summer Perseids, the Lyrid meteor shower can sometimes have an unexpected outburst of dozens of meteors per hour, according to astronomy experts at EarthSky.org and NASA.
“The Lyrids are known for their fast and bright meteors,” NASA noted. “Lyrids don’t tend to leave long, glowing dust trains behind them as they streak through the Earth’s atmosphere, but they can produce the occasional bright flash called a fireball.”
People in at least a dozen towns across New Jersey, and others in Pennsylvania and New York state, saw a bright fireball dipping down from the sky during the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday, April 10, but there’s no way of knowing if that fireball was just a stray meteor or related to the Lyrid meteor shower.
Bright moon could spoil the view
One big obstacle to seeing a large number of meteors from this year’s Lyrid shower will be the light from the April “pink moon.” The moon will be 98% illuminated on April 22 and turning completely full on April 23 — the two key times of activity for the Lyrid meteor shower.
Experts at Sky & Telescope say the Lyrid meteor shower usually produces one meteor every five minutes, “but surprises occur; counts exceeded one a minute during a Lyrid outburst in 1982.”
However, this year’s show will be dulled by the moonlight, they say.
Eta Aquariids meteor shower in May
The outlook is looking better for the annual Eta Aquariids meteor shower in early May, with the peak activity during the late-night hours on May 5 and the pre-dawn hours of May 6 coinciding with low moonlight.
When the sky is dark, this meteor shower normally generates as many as 20 to 40 shooting stars per hour, Sky & Telescope says. In our neck of the woods, in the northern hemisphere, the Eta Aquariid meteors tend to zip around low in the pre-dawn sky, so sometimes they are tough to spot.
People in the southern hemisphere usually get a better show.
Other major meteor showers in 2024
- The Southern Delta Aquariids meteor shower will be active from July 18 through Aug. 21, with the peak period July 29 into July 30, according to the American Meteor Society. This shower typically gets the best visibility from the southern hemisphere.
- The Alpha Capricornids meteor shower will be active from July 7 through Aug. 15, with peak activity on July 30 and July 31.
- The Perseid meteor shower — known as one of the best meteor showers each year — will be active from July 14 through Sept. 1, with the biggest outburst expected Aug. 11 and Aug. 12.
- The Orionids meteor shower will be active from Sept. 26 through Nov. 22, with peak activity Oct. 20 and Oct. 21.
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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com or on X at @LensReality.
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