The peak of the Lyrid meteor shower is arriving Friday for Earth Day, with the best chance of viewing before dawn.
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If the Bay Area is not smothered by clouds in the pre-dawn hours there is a chance viewers may get a glimpse of the meteor shower.
"A meteor shower occurs when the Earth and its orbit about the sun runs into a trail of debris left behind by a comet or more rarely an asteroid," Bill Cooke, lead at NASA's Meteor Office explained.
Cooke said the moonlight will wash out the fainter meteors and your best bet at seeing it is to get away from city lights, lie on your back and look straight with no binoculars needed.
"Lyrids is what we call a medium strength meteor shower," he said. "If the sky conditions are perfect you may see about 15 per hour, which translates to one every 4 minutes or so."
Cooke and his colleagues study the conditions in near space to make sure astronauts are safe going outside the space station.
"We ask ourselves questions like 'is it safe for the astronauts to go outside space station EVA?' And to do that we got to be able to understand meteor showers well enough to forecast their activity," he added.
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