Roses. Candy. Spatulas? Make that the stars: Spaceweather PHONE for Mother's Day.
METEOR SHOWER: Earth is about to pass through a stream of dust from Halley's Comet, and this will produce the annual eta Aquarid meteor shower. It peaks on Saturday morning, May 6th: full story.
PHOTO-OP: On May 8th at approximately 0320 UT (11:20 pm EDT on May 7th), fragment C of dying comet 73P/Schwassmann Wachmann 3 will pass very close to the Ring Nebula in Lyra, a.k.a. M57. The view through backyard telescopes should be wonderful.
Imagine a comet passing in front of this....
The encounter is best seen from Eurasia and eastern parts of North America; elsewhere the comet will be close to or below the horizon. Telescopes trained on the nebula will show fragment C gliding by the ring only a few arcminutes away. The comet's tail could eclipse the nebula. Start watching 30 minutes before closest approach. Sky maps: overview, detail.
NOT A RAINBOW: Sometimes, on a sunny day with no rain clouds in sight, a rainbow strangely encircles the sun. Weimin Zhu of YangZhou, China, photographed this one on April 8th:
Only this is not a rainbow. Rainbows are formed by raindrops, heavy droplets of water falling to the ground, catching sunbeams en route and spreading them in an arc of vivid color.
This is a sun halo. Sun haloes are formed by ice crystals floating in thin, almost transparent cirrus clouds 5 to 10 km above the ground. Like raindrops, these crystals catch sunbeams, but the results are different: a circle rather than an arc, colors muted rather than vivid.
It's all beautiful, so keep looking up.