The Lyrid Meteor shower is a favorite for spring. For the first time we have a meteor shower that isn't happening in the depths of winter. It is spring, and we can all go outside and enjoy this important shower. The time to look for meteors at their peak is Monday night and well into the early hours of Tuesday morning. This is a popular shower if only for the convenience of better night temperatures.

The shower is unpredictable, so watch and expect to be surprised. Usually one can see ten meteors in an hour. There have been times when the shower produces as many as a hundred meteors in an hour.

The meteors will appear coming from the constellation Lyra, the home of the bright star Vega. Lyra rises in the east late. Observers have noted meteors might put on a show. You may see a fireball meteor, a very bright meteor shooting across the sky.

While astronomers centuries ago thought the meteors came from the constellation Lyra, thus the name, the real source is something else, the orbiting debris of Comet Thatcher. Comet Thatcher passed by the Sun and Earth in 1861 and it won't be seen in our area of the solar system for another 258 more years.