When and where to view meteor showers and the Pink Moon

The skies over the Republic will be busy in the coming weeks with a flurry of celestial activity, including two meteor showers and a supermoon.

- Wallace Woon

The Lyrid meteor shower will peak in Singapore at night on April 22 till the early morning of April 23, towards the north-western sky.

With records of the phenomenon stretching back almost 3,000 years, it is one of the oldest recorded meteor showers, according to timeanddate.com, a leading platform tracking time and time zones.

On April 24, a supermoon, dubbed the Pink Moon, is expected to appear after 7.22pm in the eastern sky.

Less than a fortnight later, on May 5, the Eta Aquarids meteor shower will grace the eastern sky at around 3am.

The Straits Times spoke to Ms Li Hui Mok, manager of Informal Science Programmes at the Science Centre Singapore, to find out how Singapore residents can best view these celestial phenomena.

what do meteor showers look like? A Meteor showers are formed when the Earth travels through a cloud of interplanetary debris left behind from the tail of a comet or asteroid that has thrown out large amounts of materials, said Ms Li.

“The denser the debris clouds are, the more materials will fall on Earth, thus giving us more meteors,” she added.