Overview
- The shower, which reached its maximum from Tuesday night into early Wednesday, matched forecasts of roughly 10 to 20 meteors per hour under dark skies.
- Best views came in the Northern Hemisphere after midnight through dawn, with meteors fanning out from near Vega in the Lyra constellation.
- Viewers who found dark, open sites and used only the naked eye saw more, since phone screens ruin night vision and magnified optics narrow the view.
- The streaks come from dust shed by Comet C/1861 G1 (Thatcher), which circles the sun about every 415 years, and the Lyrids have been recorded since 687 BCE.
- Activity now tapers but remains possible through the week, and rare outbursts up to about 100 meteors per hour have been documented in some years.