Astronomical calendar April 2021: Meteor shower and super pink moon

The month of April will bring us a meteor shower and more events in the cosmos, learn the details so that you can observe these bewitching events in the April 2021 astronomical calendar.

As the year progresses, the meteor showers begin to flourish and it is the right moment to turn towards the celestial vault and reconnect with everything. Getting lost in the vastness of the sky sometimes gives a feeling of inexplicable happiness. As if the magnitude of what we witness does not fit into our mental structure and then we need to rethink our existence to understand it. Hence, looking at the stars and cosmic orbs is a quasi-religious experience.

Astronomical calendar April 2021

April 22 and 23: Lyrid Meteor Shower

Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through a set of debris or cosmic dust that at some point in cosmological history remained orbiting the Sun.

When an object, such as an asteroid or a comet, enters the interior of our Solar System, it interacts with the solar wind, which is a stream of particles coming from the Sun’s atmosphere. This solar wind produces that the materials on the surface of the comet or asteroid are ejected. Thus, these cosmic dust particles are called meteor swarms and start to orbit the Sun, just like their object of origin.

Well, when the Earth in its trajectory of the movement of translation, comes across a swarm of meteors, the cosmic dust will come into contact with the terrestrial atmosphere producing the bewitching showers of stars or meteors.

The shower of stars known as the Lyrids come from the particles left behind by comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher. It is an average meteor shower, with 20 meteors per hour at its highest point. Its period goes from April 16 to 25, but to observe its maximum point you must look up at the sky on the night of the 22nd and the early morning of the 23rd. Meteors will appear to detach from the lyra constellation, although they can appear anywhere in the vault.

April 26: Super Pink Moon

Supermoons are an extremely impressive phenomenon for those who love sweet Selene. They are called that because the phase of the most illuminated moon coincides, that is, the full moon, with the maximum approach of our natural satellite to the Earth (perigee). Thanks to this, we can appreciate it brighter and larger than normal. The phase will occur at 03:33 UTC.

This April full moon is known as pink moon, according to Native American tribes, because it marked the appearance of pink moss, which is one of the first spring flowers. This will be the first supermoon of three that 2021 holds for us.

Follow closely all the movements of the stars in our Astronomical Calendar 2021.

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