DUSHANBE, April 21, 2014, Asia-Plus – Residents of Tajikistan will be able to observe April Lyrids clear on the night of April 21-22
“The Lyrids fall from Comet C1861 G1 Thatcher as the Earth passes through her tail and activity from this meteor shower can be observed in Tajikistan without special devices, but for this, you must be far from urban illumination, on any height, where view of sky is more clear,” Ms. Gulchehra Qohirova, Director of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, told Asia-Plus in an interview.
Tajik astrophysicists will observe this meteor shower from astronomical observatory located in the Hisor district.
The April Lyrids are a meteor shower lasting from April 16 to April 26 each year. The radiant of the meteor shower is located in the constellation Lyra, near this constellation”s brightest star, Alpha Lyrae (proper name Vega). Their peak is typically around April 22 each year.
The source of the meteor shower is particles of dust shed by the long-period Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher. The April Lyrids are the strongest annual shower of meteors from debris of a long-period comet, mainly because as far as other intermediate long-period comets go (200 – 10,000 years), this one has a relatively short orbital period of about 415 years. The Lyrids have been observed for the past 2600 years.
The shower usually peaks on around April 22 and the morning of April 23. Counts typically range from 5 to 20 meteors per hour, averaging around ten. As a result of light pollution, observers in the country side will see more than observers in a city. Nights without a moon in the sky will reveal the most meteors.
April Lyrid meteors are usually around magnitude +2. However, some meteors can be brighter, known as “Lyrid fireballs”, cast shadows for a split second and leave behind smokey debris trails that last minutes.
Occasionally, the shower intensifies when the planets steer the one-revolution dust trail of the comet into Earth”s path, an event that happens about once every 60 years. This results in an April Lyrid meteor outburst. The one-revolution dust trail is dust that has completed one orbit: the stream of dust released in the return of the comet prior to the current 1862 return. This mechanism replaces earlier ideas that the outbursts were due to a cloud of dust moving in a 60-year orbit.
In 1982, amateur astronomers counted 90 April Lyrids per hour at the peak and similar rates were seen in 1922. A stronger storm of up to 700 per hour reportedly occurred in 1803, observed by a journalist in Richmond, Virginia.
