Colorado residents can celebrate Earth Day by watching 1st major meteor shower of the year ‘raining upon’ our planet
The Lyrids Meteor Shower will rise over the eastern horizon on Earth Day with about 17 shooting stars per hour
John Linke/Courtesy photo
One of the first major meteor showers of the year will coincide with Earth Day this year, offering a heavenly experience for earthbound stargazers.
Astronomy guide Mark Laurin, said the Lyrids Meteor Shower will peak Tuesday, April 22 — Earth Day — with about 17 meteors, or shooting stars, visible per hour. A member of the Denver Astronomical Society and the Astronomical League, Laurin is also an adjunct instructor with Keystone Science School. He leads astronomy and stargazing events in Colorado under the nickname Astro Mark.
“Can there be a better way to celebrate Earth Day than to have our cosmos honor Gaia, the Greek goddess who presides over Earth, by igniting by lighting up that night’s sky the first major meteor shower of the year?” Laurin wrote in his stargazing blog, AstroMark.org. “One way you can show gratitude for the terra firma we call home is by looking up and observing this meteor shower raining upon it.”
A meteor shower is debris that is left over from a comet that passed Earth, often centuries ago, Laurin said. As Earth rotates in its orbit around the sun, it passes through that debris and small particles of ice and dust burn up in the atmosphere, creating shooting stars, he said.
The Lyrids Meteor Shower will rise above the eastern horizon Tuesday night. To find the radiant point — where the shooting stars will radiate from — find the constellation Hercules, Laurin said. To do that, find Arcturus, the brightest star breaking over the horizon, around 8:30 p.m. and look right below it, he said.
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But don’t fixate on that point. “Kind of relax your eyes and just scan back-and-forth,” Laurin said, because “meteors can come from any point in the sky.” By about 10 p.m., he said shooting stars should be visible. Throughout the night, the meteors will become longer, more brilliant streaks across the sky as Earth’s rotation lines the atmosphere up with the debris.
“When you start to look right when it rises above the horizon around 10 p.m., they’re not going to be as many streakers, you’ll see more flares, more explosions light up the night sky, rather than the ones that cross the whole night sky,” Laurin said. “You’ll see those in the early morning.”
For the best stargazing experience, Laurin recommends finding a dark spot that looks eastward with few lights in the distance that may pollute the night sky. He also recommends turning phones off, or at least stashing them in pockets, since it takes about 20 minutes for people’s eyes to adjust enough to develop their “night vision.”
Laurin said as he watches the meteor shower this Earth Day, he will reflect on astronomers’ recent discovery of a possible signature of life on another planet 127 light years away.
He asked, “How long have humans looked out at the night sky and wondered whether other life is out there?”
“For me, on this Earth Day with the discovery of fundamental life on other planets, I truly can’t say how fortunate we are that we live in this delicate balance where life for us has evolved to the point where we can make these discoveries,” Laurin said. “Our earth, our species, has evolved enough that we can look outside of our very special sphere and find like worlds — that is profound. I cherish each moment that I walk on this earth.”
