From Sunday night into the wee hours of Monday morning, we will experience a meteor shower. Meteors, also called shooting stars, will appear sporadically through out the night. Unfortunately, a near full moon will obstruct our being able to see most of them. The Lyrid meteor shower is an annual event. The meteors appear to come from the zodiacal constellation Lyra, one of the smallest constellations in the summer and late spring sky. Lyra rises in the eastern sky before midnight.  The meteors radiate from that constellation so the most ideal time to look is when Lyra has gotten some height in the east. Meteors can be seen any time. The meteors for this shower are associated with a comet, Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher. The comet visited the solar system back in 1861 and isn't expected to return for over a century. The orbit is so elliptical and reaches so far out to space, it takes the comet over 400 years to go around the sun once.

Expectations for this shower are low this year, less than ten meteors an hour, with the brilliant moon. But sometimes the shower can be quite active.

The moon is full on Tuesday and we call this familiar moon the Daffodil moon, paying attention to the colors of this month.