April ‘showers’ in late-night hours

Look to the sky after all the races and parties of Little 500 weekend. Beginning around midnight April 21, stargazers will be able to see hundreds of meteors falling from the cosmos.\nThe stream of meteors originates from the comet Thatcher C/1861 G1, according to NASA’s Web site. \nMeteor showers are commonly visible in Bloomington, said Caty Pilachowski of the IU Astronomy Department. In fact, they were first accurately explained by Daniel Kirkwood, a professor of mathematics at IU, in the 19th century. Kirkwood discovered that meteor showers were the result of an aged comet that had been heated by the sun and broken apart, Pilachowski said.\n“Meteor showers occur at a time in which Earth crosses the orbit of a broken comet,” Pilachowski said. “When it passes through the orbit, many particles will fall into Earth’s atmosphere. They are burnt up from the heat, and most are very, very small particles, only a few millimeters in diameter.”\nMeteor showers can be compared to other, larger celestial bodies.\n“It’s like a weird asteroid belt,” Pilachowski said. “Comets are fairly fragile bodies. Mostly the bodies that become comets hang out on orbits that keep them way outside of the solar system. Occasionally these bodies will be pulled, causing them to come into the solar system.”\nBut they don’t last forever.\n“A comet will survive for a couple of orbits but will eventually break up,” Pilachowski said. “The outer surface will be heated by sun and will evaporate away. This produces the tail that comets are famous for.”\nThe term “meteor” refers to the streak of light that flashes in the sky, Pilachowski said. A meteorite is an object that produces the streak of light and falls to the ground. A meteoroid is the original object that produces the streak of light when it falls into the atmosphere. \n“A meteoroid is pulled in by Earth’s gravity,” Pilachowski said. “You see the flash of a meteor, and we find meteorites on the ground.”\nAccording to NASA, the visibility of the meteors in the meteor shower is comparable to the brightness of the stars in the Big Dipper. Viewers can expect to see a few meteors every minute or so, but there have been past accounts of almost 90 meteors per hour. The upcoming meteor shower is the oldest recorded meteor shower, dating back 2600 years to ancient Chinese accounts, according to NASA.\nThe meteor shower of April 21-22 is referred to by astronomers as the Lyrid meteor shower. \nLyra is a constellation in the northern hemisphere of the sky, according to NASA. The name refers to the origin of the trail of cosmic debris, but that’s not to say that stargazers should look north in the direction of the constellation to see the shower, Pilachowski said. The falling pieces of space rock can be seen almost anywhere in the sky a few hours before dawn.\nNo binoculars or telescopes are needed to watch this galactic presentation, Pilachowski said, but blankets and some snacks are probably a good idea. The farther away from city lights you are, the more impressive the cosmic fanfare will be.\nThe meteor shower is expected to last five to six hours between midnight and dawn April 21.