Cyprus

Two meteor showers reach their peak on the night of July 30: the Southern Delta Aquariids and the Alpha Capricornids. In a good year that’s a fine reason to drive up to Troodos and lie back for a couple of hours. This is not a good year. The Buck Moon turns full on July 29 at 14:36 UT, and two nights later it’s still 96% lit and up from dusk to dawn, parked in the same corner of the southern sky the meteors come from. The plan, then: don’t waste a special trip on July 30. Learn what these two showers are, catch a few of the brighter ones in the darker nights beforehand, and save your effort for August 12, when the Moon disappears entirely. ...

The Eta Aquariids peaked at 03:51 UTC on May 5, but this shower has a broad maximum — activity tonight and tomorrow morning (May 6–7) will be nearly as strong as peak night. The problem isn’t timing. It’s the moon: an 84%-illuminated waning gibbous will sit above the horizon during the entire pre-dawn window when the radiant is highest. That cuts your visible count roughly in half compared to a moonless year. ...

Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) passed perihelion on April 19, 2026 at 0.499 AU from the Sun, then made its closest pass of Earth on April 26 at 0.489 AU (about 73 million km). For a few days around peak it pulled to roughly magnitude +3 to +5, depending on whose visual estimate you trust on the COBS database. Bright enough to spot in dark-sky binoculars, faint enough that nobody from the Northern Mediterranean was going to call it a naked-eye showpiece. ...

The Lyrids peaked around 19:40 UT on April 22 — essentially yesterday evening for anyone in Europe. Conditions were as good as this shower gets: a new moon on April 17 meant only a thin crescent in the sky, and it set before 10 pm local, leaving the prime post-midnight hours properly dark. Under a clean dark site the International Meteor Organization expected 18–20 meteors per hour at the peak. From a light-polluted backyard, Space.com put realistic rates closer to 8–12/hour. ...