CATCH A FALLING STAR

Last Friday night I arrived home from babysitting at 11.30pm to my sick puppy.  So we spent a good hour out the back whilst she ate grass to try to make herself feel better.  I gazed up at the night stars when all of a sudden a tennis ball sized star shot across the sky which appeared to be about tree level. It was amazing but I forgot to make a wish. Grrr! Ever since I have had Catch a Falling Star music going through my head.

                                   Catch a Falling Star

                                   ~ Perry Como

Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Never let it fade away
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Save it for a rainy day


For love may come and tap you on the shoulder some starless night
Just in case you feel you want to hold her
You'll have a pocketful of starlight
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Never let it fade away
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Save it for a rainy day


For love may come and tap you on the shoulder some starless night
And Just in case you feel you want to hold her
You'll have a pocketful of starlight
(Pocketful of starlight, hm,hm,hm,hm,hm,hm)


Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Never let it fade away
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Save it for a rainy day
(Save it for a rainy, save it for a rainy, rainy, rainy, day)


For when your troubles start multiplyin' and they just might
It's easy to forget them without tryin'
With just a pocketful of starlight


Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Never let it fade away
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Save it for a rainy day
(Save it for a rainy day)
Save it for a rainy day

Apparently there is an annual meteor show around this time called April Lyrids. A falling star has nothing to do with an actual star.  These amazing streaks of light are caused through tiny bits of dust and rock called meteoroids falling into the Earths atmosphere and burning up. The trail of light the burning meteoroid produces is called a meteor.  Meteors are commonly called falling stars.

Meteor Alerts
The Lyrid Meteor Shower
SpaceWeather.com Global Notes: This is a northern hemisphere shower.
Every year in late April Earth passes through the dusty tail of Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1), and the encounter causes a meteor shower--the Lyrids. This year the shower peaks on Wednesday morning, April 22nd. The best time to look, no matter where you live, is during the dark hours before dawn. Forecasters expect 10 to 20 meteors per hour visible from dark-sky sites.
Lyrid meteors appear to stream from the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra:
In fact, Lyrids have nothing to do with Vega. The true source of the shower is Comet Thatcher. Every year in April, Earth plows through Thatcher's drawn-out dusty tail. Flakes of comet dust, most no bigger than grains of sand, strike Earth's atmosphere traveling 49 km/s (110,000 mph) and disintegrate as streaks of light--meteors!
Lyrid meteors are typically as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper, which is to say of middling brightness. But some are more intense, even brighter than Venus. These "Lyrid fireballs" cast shadows for a split second and leave behind smokey debris trails that linger for minutes.
Occasionally, the shower intensifies. Most years in April there are no more than 5 to 20 meteors per hour during the shower's peak. But sometimes, when Earth glides through an unusually dense clump of comet debris, the rate increases. Sky watchers in 1982, for instance, counted 90 Lyrids per hour. An even more impressive outburst was documented in 1803 by a journalist in Richmond, Virginia, who wrote:
"Shooting stars. This electrical [sic] phenomenon was observed on Wednesday morning last at Richmond and its vicinity, in a manner that alarmed many, and astonished every person that beheld it. From one until three in the morning, those starry meteors seemed to fall from every point in the heavens, in such numbers as to resemble a shower of sky rockets..." [ref]
What will the Lyrids do this year? The only way to know for sure is to go outside and look.
Experienced meteor watchers suggest the following viewing strategy: Dress warmly. Bring a reclining chair, or spread a thick blanket over a flat spot of ground. Lie down and look up somewhat toward the east. Meteors can appear in any part of the sky, although their trails will tend to point back toward the radiant--i.e., toward Vega.
Vega is a brilliant blue-white star about three times wider than our Sun and 25 light years away. About 14,000 years ago Vega was the North Star. Earth's spin axis wanders: Now it points at Polaris, then it pointed at Vega. You might have seen Vega in Carl Sagan's movie Contact. It was the source of alien radio transmissions to Earth.
next time I must remember to make a wish and catch it and put it in my pocket for a rainy day.