The mild nights of spring are good times for skywatching. Only one thing is missing: a great meteor shower. The best showers are clustered in fall and winter, with the Perseids of August sometimes joining the list.

Although the season doesn’t offer a great shower, a pretty good one should reach its peak tomorrow night: the Lyrids. Under a dark sky, you might see up to a couple of dozen meteors per hour between midnight and dawn. The number of meteors increases closer to dawn, as your part of Earth turns more directly into the meteor stream. Unfortunately, by then the waning Moon will be in the sky, so its light will compete with the fainter meteors.

One good thing about meteors, though, is that you don’t have to wait for a shower to see them.

A shower occurs when Earth passes through a stream of small bits of dust and rock shed by a comet or asteroid. There are many showers through the year, but only a few are noticeable.

But bits of rocky debris are scattered throughout the solar system. So on any dark night, you can see several meteors zipping across the sky. And these “random” meteors can come from any direction and blaze across any part of the sky.

So if you have a chance, look for the Lyrid meteor shower in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. If not, then take advantage of just about any clear, dark night to look for meteors flashing across the heavens.

Tomorrow: a steady light far across the galaxy.

Script by Damond Benningfield