Tomorrow morning could have been a triple jackpot for stargazers in Maryland - a nice, spring meteor shower, a rare close encounter of Venus and the crescent moon, and a nice flyby by the International Space Station - all in the hours before dawn. But, alas, bad luck in the form of clouds are conspiring to spoil the view.
The annual Lyrid meteor shower occurs as the Earth plows through the dusty trail of the comet Thatcher. As the sand-grain-sized bits of comet dust strike the atmosphere, they heat up the air around them and create fleeting trails of light across the sky.
But forecasters are calling for showers before 3 a.m., and mostly cloudy skies and a chance for more showers Wednesday morning.
The other attraction before the dawn on Wednesday was to be a close conjunction of the planet Venus and the waning crescent moon, low in the eastern sky around 5 a.m. For observers in the western U.S., the moon will actually pass in front of Venus, eclipsing its light for more than an hour. It's called an occultation. Here's a video of a recent one. For Marylanders, it is only a very close encounter, probably best observed with binoculars.
But given the forecast, the most practical equipment may be an umbrella.
Finally, the International Space Station, appearing daily in the morning sky this week, will make a very bright pass just north and west of Baltimore on Wednesday morning. If skies were to clear in time, you could look for the ISS to appear above the western horizon at 5:32 a.m., rising like a bright, steady star to more than halfway up the northwestern sky by 5:35 a.m. before slipping off to the northeast and disappearing at 5:38 a.m.
All this information is for the optimists who may be willing to rise and shine and give it a go. For the rest, sleep tight.
