This week in What’s Up is the best time to see Mercury in the northern hemisphere, a meteor shower to look forward to next month, and more.

First up is the Lyrids. From April 21 in the evening through to the evening of the 22nd, the Lyrid Meteor Shower will be providing ten to fifteen meteors per hour. The meteors, which are orbiting roughly along with Earth, appear to come from a fixed point in space, called the radiant. If you traced the meteors back in the sky, most of them would converge back to this point. To find the radiant for the Lyrids, look to the northeast for the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra. The radiant for the Lyrids can be found a little further east.

The Moon will be in its last quarter on April 23 during the Lyrids, which should help with spotting meteors. Like the first quarter, this phase is also a good time to look at the Moon in a telescope, with the additional promise of it being a new moon in a few short days’ time so you can look at faint fuzzies easier.

M57, the Ring Nebula, a planetary nebula located in the constellation Lyra, is easily found between the two stars farthest from Vega in the constellation. A planetary nebula is a white dwarf star that has stopped nuclear fusion and shed its outer layers into space. Early astronomers with telescopes confused these with nebula, active star-forming regions. The name stuck.

In most telescopes, it will be a gray smudge but is nevertheless worth taking a look at. With really good viewing conditions and a decent telescope, you might be able to see a hint of green. M57 is rather unique in that when you have perfect viewing conditions and a larger telescope, you may be able to faintly see the white dwarf star at the center of the nebula.

Next is Mercury. Just after sunset on Saturday, April 24, Mercury will be at its greatest heliocentric latitude north, meaning that it will be at the highest elevation it will ever be in the evening this year. Look to the west-northwest and find the closest planet to where the Sun set.

A few hours later, in that awkward time where it’s too late to stay up and too early to wake up and then go back to sleep before you have to be up for real, aka 05:30 in the morning Central Time, the crescent Moon will be a few degrees away from both Mars and Saturn. Those two planets will be joined in a line with Saturn and Venus further away.

Finally, let’s look ahead to next month. May brings a meteor shower, the Tau Herculids, which is what’s left of Comet 79P/SW3, which disintegrated in 1995. SW3 was discovered in 1930 by two German astronomers while they were looking for asteroids. The disintegration made it much brighter than it was previously. So bright that it was visible with the unaided eye for a short period of time.

Although the shower is called the Tau Herculids, the radiant this year will actually be in Böotes, near the globular cluster M3. The wandering of the radiant is caused by the gravitational pull of Jupiter, which has changed the orbit of the remnants of SW3.

The shower will peak in a half-hour window on May 31 starting at 05:04 UTC, or four minutes after midnight Central Time, in the middle of the night from May 30 to the 31st.

More Information

2022 Lyrid meteor shower: All you need to know (EarthSky)

A Rare Planetary Alignment Is About to Happen. Here’s How You Can See It (Science Alert)

Tau Herculid meteors in May might be intense! (EarthSky)