ISTAMBAY SA MINDANAO

A friend sent this text message that someone, a geoscientist from Manila, informed her that Lyrids, a meteor shower can be seen tonight (past midnight, actually early morning April 22) from the northeast sky. I verified from the net and this is what I found out.

 “METEOR SHOWER? An increase in the number of meteors at a particular time of year is called a meteor shower.

Comets shed the debris that becomes most meteor showers. As comets orbit the Sun, they shed an icy, dusty debris stream along the comet’s orbit. If Earth travels through this stream, we will see a meteor shower. epending on where Earth and the stream meet, meteors appear to fall from a particular place in the sky, maybe within the neighborhood of a constellation.

Meteor showers are named by the constellation from which meteors appear to fall, a spot in the sky astronomers call the radiant. For instance, the radiant for the Leonid meteor shower is located in the constellation Leo. The Perseid meteor shower is so named because meteors appear to fall from a point in the constellation Perseus.”