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The week ahead promises to be a perfect time to observe meteors. That's great news since the Lyrid meteor shower peaks on Sunday (April 22), but any night this week should be a good night to see meteors.

A meteor occurs when a tiny fragment of interplanetary material, known as a meteoroid, enters the Earth's atmosphere and is heated to incandescence. This usually occurs at an altitude between 47 and 62 miles (75 and 100 kilometers). Most meteoroids are vaporized in the process; only the largest survive to reach the surface of the Earth, where they are called meteorites.

Meteors are visible every night of the year, but some nights are better than others. The best nights are those with no moon in the sky during one of the many meteor showers that take place during the year.

A meteor shower occurs when the Earth passes through a swarm of meteoroids. These are usually debris from a comet, spread out along the orbit of that comet. The Lyrid meteor sky map associated with this guide shows where to look to see the celestial display.

From our location on the surface of the Earth, when we look in the direction of that orbit, we see the meteors in that shower as streaks of light appearing to radiate from the line of that orbit. That point in the sky is called the radiant of that shower, and usually the shower is named for the constellation in which the radiant is located.