The April Rho Cygnids meteor shower
Key facts
- Peak
- around 29 April
- Active
- late April to early May
- Rate at peak (ZHR)
- very low (detected by radar and video)
- Speed
- about 41 km/s
- Radiant
- Cygnus (near the star Rho Cygni, east of Deneb)
- Parent body
- Unknown; possibly a Halley-type or Jupiter-family comet
Dates shift slightly from year to year. This year's peak is in the events calendar, and the meteor-shower planner shows how high the radiant climbs from where you live, night by night.
The April Rho Cygnids are a faint late-April shower from the Swan, found by radar and later confirmed by video cameras. They follow the Lyrids, whose radiant is not far away, by about a week.
Discovery. The shower was identified by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar, which measured the orbits of millions of faint meteors between 2002 and 2009. Groups of orbits that matched closely were picked out as possible showers, and in 2011 a video network in California confirmed this one with a few dozen of its own measured meteors.
The radiant. The radiant lies near Rho Cygni, east of Deneb, the bright star at the tail of the Swan. From the UK, Cygnus rises in the north-east in the evening in late April and is high before dawn.
A layered stream. A second shower, the Zeta Cygnids, has a radiant nearby and peaks a little earlier in April. Studies of video orbits suggest that the two may be filaments of a single, diffuse stream with a layered structure, probably left by one old comet. The parent has not been identified. It has been suggested that the stream is related to comet C/1917 F1 (Mellish), the parent of the December Monocerotids, but that idea is not settled.
What to expect. Very few meteors: this shower is a target for cameras rather than for eyes. Meteors would be of medium speed, at about 41 kilometres per second, similar to the Lyrids. A meteor from the area of Deneb in late April is more likely to be a late Lyrid or a sporadic one.
Viewing. This is a northern shower. From the UK the radiant is best placed before dawn. From the southern hemisphere it is low or below the horizon.
Viewing tips
- Find Deneb, the bright star at the tail of Cygnus, and look east of it.
- Watch in the hours before dawn, when Cygnus is high in the east.
- Remember that the Lyrid radiant, near Vega, is close by.
- Use a video camera if you want to record members of this faint shower.
- Note the direction of each meteor carefully.
Read about the parent: Comet Mellish, and the other comets behind meteor showers.