You are not going to be disappointed this month. There are 4 comets and 1 asteroid as well as 1 meteor shower visible!
Let’s talk about comet first. There are Lovejoy (C2007/E2), 2P/Encke, 4P/Faye and 96P/Machholz. Lovejoy is the comet discovered by Terry Lovejoy in March. It’s moving from Sagittarius to Lyra. At the beginning of April, its magnitude is 8.6 and is expected to brighten about 0.7 magnitude. Encke begins the month in Aries at magnitude 7.6 and moving into Cetus by month’s end.
For more information regarding the comet, please visit Comet Chasing.
The meteor shower, Lyrids is predicted to peak at 2230UT on 22 April 2007. The peak rate is about 25/hour. The radiant of Lyrids is the central of Hercules, four degrees southeast of the third magnitude star Pi Herculis. For more, please read The American Meteor Society.
The asteroid 2007 HA is 300m in diameter and 6.5 LD away from Earth. Its magnitude is 13th currently so you need a pretty big backyard scope to see it visually or you can image it with smaller scope. This movie shows the travelling 2007 HA. This asteroid is discovered by MIT’s Linear Project.
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