If you are social distancing in your back garden this evening, be sure to take a look up to the sky to try and and catch the beginning of the annual Lyrid meteor display.
The Lyrid meteor shower takes place each year between April 16th and April 25th, with the peak expected late on the Tuesday 21st through to the early hours of Wednesday 22nd.
Normally the Lyrids produce 10 to 15 visible meteors an hour but sometimes the shower can surge to a greater number in dark skies.
In plain English, a meteor shower is in fact a series of shooting stars, although they actually have nothing to do with stars.
The earliest sightings of the Lyrid meteor shower go back 2,700 years and are among the oldest of known meteor showers with occurs as the Earth passes through the dust left over from Comet Thatcher (C/186 G1), which orbits the sun once every 415 years.
