The Lyrid meteor shower hits its peak on the evening of 22 April, or early hours of the 23rd, but you can look for them any time between the 16th and 25th. 快猫短视频鈥榮 stargazing companion will talk you through what to look for. You can find the audio below or in the podcast episode feed for The world, the universe and us.

Meteors are caused by high-speed debris from space hitting Earth鈥檚 atmosphere. These tiny grains of dust or rock enter the atmosphere at such speeds that the friction between them and the air makes them burn up, producing a flash that moves across the sky.

As Earth makes its yearly journey around the sun, it passes through a series of clouds of dust and debris, left behind by comets or asteroids, causing an increase in the number of meteors we see. This is why the same meteor showers happen at similar times each year.

The Lyrids meteor shower is caused by the long-period comet C/1861 G1, also known as Thatcher. Discovered in 1861, Thatcher takes 415 years to orbit the sun. It is expected to return to our part of the solar system around the year 2278.

You don鈥檛 need to look in one part of the sky to see a meteor shower. But each one is named after the bit of the sky where the meteors seem to start, or radiate from. In this case, it is the northern hemisphere constellation Lyra, which contains the bright star Vega.

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If you are in the northern hemisphere, you can look for the constellation Lyra. The constellation won鈥檛 be visible from the southern hemisphere, but meteors can travel in all directions, so some shooting stars might be visible if you look east.

From the northern hemisphere, Lyra will be in the east just after sunset. If you鈥檙e looking a little later, it will be higher up in the sky, making it a better time to look for meteors 鈥� although the closer you get to sunrise, the brighter the sky will be.

The easiest way to find Lyra is to look for a pattern of stars known as the聽Summer Triangle, so named because it is made up of three bright stars in a triangle shape and, in summer in the northern hemisphere, around midnight, it appears directly overhead. At midnight in late April, the three bright stars will appear near the eastern horizon. The highest of these is聽Vega, and this is in聽Lyra.

If you鈥檙e looking at the peak, and you have clear and dark skies, you could see between 10 and 18 meteors in an hour.

Nearly all of the planets in the solar system are about to march through the night sky in a single-file line. This planetary alignment, sometimes called a planet parade, will include all of the solar system鈥檚 planets except Mars, as it is currently on the opposite side of the sun from Earth and therefore not visible.

Alignments like this only occur every few years, when all the planets鈥� orbits happen to carry them to the same side of the sun at the same time. All of their orbits are different lengths 鈥� Mercury takes 88 Earth days to circle the sun while Neptune takes about 165 Earth years 鈥� so planetary alignments are a lucky coincidence of geometry and orbital dynamics.

Sometimes they happen relatively close together 鈥� February 2025 saw a so-called 鈥済reat alignment鈥�, where all seven planets were visible at once 鈥� and sometimes years go by without a single one.

During a planetary alignment, the planets trace a line across the sky along what鈥檚 called the ecliptic. This is the same line that the sun follows across the sky during the day, although the tilts of the planets鈥� orbits make it so that they don鈥檛 line up perfectly. From beyond the solar system, the planets would not appear in a line 鈥� that is an optical illusion due to the fact that all of the planets orbit in the same plane.

The alignment will be visible across a range of dates depending on where you are in the world, but 28 February and 1 March will be the best days to see it in most places. Find a spot with a clear view of the western sky and as little light pollution as possible and look out for the parade.

The best time to see the planet parade on 28 February will be less than an hour or so after sunset: Mercury鈥檚 orbit close to the sun means that it will sink below the horizon shortly after the sun does. Right after sunset, both Mercury and Venus will be visible low on the western horizon. Saturn and Neptune will be just above them, then Uranus, and finally Jupiter relatively close to the nearly-full moon.

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While Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter should be visible to the naked eye, binoculars will be necessary to spot Uranus, and a telescope to see Neptune, because they are so far away.

All of our solar system鈥檚 planets are lining up to parade through the night sky at once. This extraordinary celestial event will see the sky scattered with seven visible planets in what is known as a great planetary alignment.

The eight planets in our solar system orbit the sun in roughly the same plane, because they all originally formed from the same disc of debris around the sun. The line the sun traces across the daytime sky, called the ecliptic, aligns with this plane, so when the planets appear in the sky, they all appear roughly along the ecliptic. It isn鈥檛 a perfect line of planets, because their orbits are tilted slightly, but it is fairly close.

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Never is this more apparent than during a planetary alignment. An alignment including all of the planets except Mercury is taking place in mid-January. Uranus and Neptune, being the most distant planets, will only be visible through a telescope, but you may be able to spot the others with the naked eye.

The great alignment, including Mercury, will only happen for a few evenings around 28 February, depending on your location. All seven planets will be visible briefly right after sunset, stretching in an arc across the sky.

By the time the sky is completely dark, Mercury and Saturn will have sunk below the horizon, with Neptune and Venus following shortly after. The best time to spot the planets will be in the hour after sunset, when all of them except Mars, Jupiter and Uranus will be close to the horizon. Those three will continue to hang around for most of the night, but spotting three planets in the sky isn鈥檛 nearly as rare as finding all seven.

The main thing preventing such alignments from being visible all of the time 鈥� aside from weather 鈥� is the difference in orbital periods between the planets. Mercury, which is closest to the sun, takes about 88 Earth days to complete an orbit, while Neptune, which is most distant, takes nearly 165 Earth years.

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A great alignment is only possible when the planets are all relatively far from the sun, so they are visible at night, and all in roughly the same half of the sky, so they can be seen at the same time. It is a remarkable orbital coincidence 鈥� sometimes there are multiple great alignments in a year, and sometimes several years pass without a single one.

In some ways, a planetary alignment is simply an optical illusion: the planets are still separated by millions or billions of kilometres, and if you could look down on our solar system from outside of it, you would never see them arrayed in a perfect line emanating from the sun. But for stargazers around the world, it鈥檚 an excellent chance to see all of the planets at once, neatly arrayed across the sky.

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