“Meteor showers seen from the Grand Canyon make whitewater rafting even ... - Examiner” plus 2 more

---

• Meteor showers seen from the Grand Canyon make whitewater rafting even ... - Examiner
• Walt Whitman Meteor Mystery Solved by Astronomer ... - AOL News
• Perseid Meteor Shower 2009 - Webuser.co.uk

Meteor showers seen from the Grand Canyon make whitewater rafting even ... - Examiner Posted: 03 Jun 2010 10:37 PM PDT Message from Five Filters: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Comment Subscribe Subscribe Stargazing in the Grand Canyon is well – grand! The complete absence of light (except for the moon at times) enables you to see meteor showers at their most glorious. When the last camper has gone to bed, and all is quiet, you are blanketed by a night sky bursting with stars -- stars so bright you want to reach out and touch them. The Grand Canyon is the perfect location to behold meteor showers. Small fragments of cosmic debris entering the earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds produce meteor showers. Each time a comet swings by the sun, it produces large amounts of small particles, which will eventually spread out along the entire orbit of the comet to form a meteoroid "stream." Depending on where the Earth's orbit and the comet's orbit intersect, meteors appear to fall from a particular place in the sky for a few days, maybe within the neighborhood of a constellation, thereby giving the meteor shower its name. Perseid meteors will appear to "rain" into the atmosphere from the constellation Perseus, which rises in the northeast around 10 p.m. in mid-August. At its peak, the shower could produce up to 100 meteors per hour. This year's shower should peak on the night of August 12 and the morning of the 13th. The thin, crescent moon will be out of the way early, setting the stage for a potentially spectacular show. (There is the possibility of seeing meteors any time from July 23 - August 22 as well). The radiant point for this shower will be in the constellation Perseus. For best viewing, look to the northeast after midnight. Arizona River Runners offers a number of rafting trips during this "peak meteor season." To see a meteor shower is awe-inspiring! And what better way to experience a meteor shower than camping out on the banks of the Colorado River on a rafting trip? Call them at 1-800-477-7238 for your adventure of a lifetime and indulge your love of the night sky! Arizona River Runners is one of the most innovative, progressive and well-respected outfitters operating in the Grand Canyon. Enjoy this article? Receive e-mail alerts when new Grand Canyon National Park articles are available. Just click on the "Subscribe" button above. Five Filters featured article: Into the Abyss. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Walt Whitman Meteor Mystery Solved by Astronomer ... - AOL News Posted: 03 Jun 2010 01:11 PM PDT Message from Five Filters: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. (June 3) - The long-standing mystery over exactly what famed poet Walt Whitman saw streaking though the sky 150 years ago has apparently been solved by a team of bookworm astronomers. Following a trail that began with a 19th century painting and led to hundreds of newspaper reports, the researchers discovered that the "strange huge meteor-procession" mentioned in Whitman's noted collection "Leaves of Grass" indeed refers to a rare procession of earth-grazing meteors that occurred in 1860. "Meteor processions are so rare most people have never heard of them," said Texas State University physics professor Donald Olson, who worked on the investigation. "There was one in 1783 and a Canadian fireball procession in 1913. Those were all the meteor processions we knew of." Earth-grazing meteors unmasked Earth-grazers enter the atmosphere at low angle, from the point of view of a given skywatcher, and appear to scoot slowly and dramatically along the horizon. They're much different than meteors appearing overhead and shooting swiftly toward the horizon For years, Whitman's description had been alternately attributed to several events, including: The 1833 Leonid meteor shower, the 1858 Leonids shower and a famous 1859 fireball. But the timeframe of the poem, which is titled "Year of the Meteor," listed under "1859-1860," and includes a definite reference to the Great Comet of 1860, conflicted with the 1833 sighting. Evidence for the1858 sighting was also weakened when the date of a separate meteor shower observation by Whitman was corrected from 1858 to 1833. Additionally, a fireball is only one blaze in the sky, while a meteor procession exhibits multiple blazing objects. Olson and his team describe their astronomical investigation in the July 2010 edition of "Sky & Telescope" magazine. Painting shows the way A single painting by 19th century landscape artist Frederic Church was the happenstance clue in solving the puzzle behind Whitman's reference. Titled "The Meteor of 1860" and picturing a procession of meteors through the night's sky, the work was glimpsed by Olson on the back cover of an art exhibition catalog. Upon visiting Church's house in New England and a research library that contained old diaries of a friend, the team learned that Church lived in Catskill, N.Y., in July 1860, when the painting was produced. That date allowed the researchers to focus their study on the time period's newspapers, which surprisingly enough verified the sighting of an Earth-grazing meteor during the evening of July 20, 1860. Breaking apart in the atmosphere, the meteor split into multiple fireballs that burned overhead in skies visible from the Great Lakes to New York State. The New York Times, Smithsonian, and Harper's Weekly all covered the event, with Scientific American calling it "the largest meteor that has ever been seen." According to Olson, the eyewitness accounts from town newspapers alone totaled in the hundreds and provided enough information about the meteor's changing location for the team to extrapolate its route. "From all the observations in towns up and down the Hudson River Valley, we're able to determine the meteor's appearance down to the hour and minute," Olson said. "Church observed it at 9:49 p.m. when the meteor passed overhead, and Walt Whitman would've seen it at the same time, give or take one minute." "A really cool part is that the Catskill newspaper describes it as dividing into two parts with scintillations, exactly like the painting," said co-researcher Ava G. Pope, an Honors Program at Texas State University who contributed to the project. Despite its extreme rarity as an astronomical phenomenon and its heavy documentation in the day's newspapers and magazines, the event was forgotten by the mid-20th century, researchers said in a statement. -- Images - The Best of Leonid Meteor Shower -- Gallery - Earth's Meteor Craters -- Ancient 40-Pound Meteorite Pulled From Ditch in Oregon Five Filters featured article: Into the Abyss. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Perseid Meteor Shower 2009 - Webuser.co.uk Posted: 03 Jun 2010 04:00 AM PDT Message from Five Filters: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Tomorrow sees the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower, which will be clearest to UK stargazers just before dawn and from late evening on August 12, according to BBC News. The shower occurs when the Earth passes through debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle, with dozens of meteors potentially visible per hour, without the aid of telescope. Here's a preview of this amazing astronomical phenomenon, captured on August 9, 2009 by astrophotographer John Chumack. Five Filters featured article: Into the Abyss. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

You are subscribed to email updates from Add Images to any RSS Feed To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610