“Solar Eclipse and Meteor Shower to Launch 2011 Skywatching Season - YAHOO!” plus 1 more |
| Solar Eclipse and Meteor Shower to Launch 2011 Skywatching Season - YAHOO! Posted: 31 Dec 2010 12:40 PM PST The year 2011 promises to be a dazzling one for skywatchers, and it hits the ground running with a partial solar eclipse and meteor shower. But those two sky spectacles are just the beginning for 2011. Here are some of the more noteworthy sky events that will take place over the next year. SPACE.com's Night Sky column will provide more extensive coverage of most of these events as they draw closer. Jan. 4 – Meteor shower, solar eclipse and planets (oh my!): An action-packed day on the celestial calendar. First, the Quadrantid Meteor Shower reaches its peak during the predawn hours. It's one of the best meteor displays of the year, with 50 to 100 meteors per hour. Those living in Europe and western and central Asia should have the best views. As a bonus, those areas of the world will witness a partial eclipse of the sun on this same day. The greatest part of the eclipse, where nearly 86 percent of the sun's diameter will be covered, occurs at sunrise over northeastern Sweden, along the Gulf of Bothnia, near the city of Skellefteå. Cities in Western Europe, including Oslo, London, Paris and Madrid, will also enjoy a sunrise eclipse. Finally, Jupiter will engage Uranus in the last of a series of three conjunctions; there have been only six such triple conjunctions between 1801 and 2200.The last was in 1983 and the next will come during 2037-38. March 15 – Mercury and Jupiter draw close: Like two ships passing in the twilight, Mercury and Jupiter come within 2 degrees of each other this evening. For comparison, your fist held at arm's length covers about 10 degrees of arc in the night sky. Jupiter will be heading toward the sun, while Mercury is moving away from the sun during this time. Immediately after sunset, concentrate on that part of the sky just above and to the left of where the sun has just set. Using binoculars, sweep around this part of the sky to see bright Jupiter sitting just below and to the left of the harder-to-spot Mercury. May (all month long): Four of the five naked-eye planets will crowd together into what could be described as a Great Celestial Summit Meeting. Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter are contained within a 10-degree span on May 1, shrinking to a minimum of less than 6 degrees on May 12, then opening back up to 10 degrees on May 20. Twice during May, three planets close to within nearly 2 degrees of each other: Mercury-Venus-Jupiter (on May 11-12) and Mercury-Venus-Mars (May 21). And the crescent moon joins the array on May 1 and again on May 30-31. June 1 – A partial eclipse of the sun: The zone of visibility for this eclipse covers parts of northeast Asia, where the largest eclipse occurs over Cheshskaya Bay and the Bolshezemelskaya Tundra of far northwestern Russia. Here, the upper three-fifths of the midnight sun will appear bitten away. The eclipse will also be available to the northern two-thirds of Alaska (an early afternoon event), as well as northern and eastern portions of Canada, where viewers will see the eclipse during the course of their afternoon, as the sun slowly descends toward the west-northwest horizon. Greenland and Iceland are also within the eclipse zone, the latter getting a view just before the sun begins to set in their late evening. The penumbral shadow quits the surface over the open waters of the Atlantic to the east of Newfoundland, as the sun passes out of sight. June 15 – A total eclipse of the moon: The Americas are pretty much shut out of this event, but almost the entire Eastern Hemisphere will be able see it. [Photos: The Total Lunar Eclipse of 2010] At mid-eclipse, the moon passes just north of the center of the Earth's shadow. As such, the duration of totality is an unusually long 100 minutes, which is just seven minutes shy of the absolute maximum for a total lunar eclipse. In fact, over the last one hundred years, only three other eclipses have rivaled the duration of totality of this eclipse: 1935, July 16 (101 minutes); 1982, July 6 (107 minutes), and 2000, July 16 (107 minutes). Aug. 13 – Perseidmeteor shower: More of a lowlight than a highlight; the annual summer performance of the Perseid meteor shower will be severely hindered by the light of a full moon. Oct. 8 – Draconidmeteor shower: Many meteor experts are predicting a good chance that an outburst of up to many hundreds of Draconid meteors will take place. Unfortunately, like the Perseids, a bright moon could severely hamper visibility. The peak of the display is due sometime between 16h and 21h UT, meaning that the best chances of seeing any enhanced activity from these very slow-moving meteors would be from Eastern Europe and Asia. Nov. 10 – Mars and bright star: A colorful conjunction takes place high in the predawn sky between the yellow-orange Mars and the bluish-white star Regulus in Leo, the Lion. They are separated by 1.3 degrees, but they'll be within 2 degrees of each other for five days and within 5 degrees of each other for nearly three weeks, so they will be a rather long-enduring feature of the mid-autumn morning sky. Nov. 25 – A partial eclipse of the sun: The earth's penumbral shadow brushes the southern and western portion of South Africa. Greatest eclipse — nearly 91 percent of the sun's diameter covered as it reaches a magnitude of 0.905 – occurs at a point in the Bellingshausen Sea along the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The shadow (just barely) manages to pass over Tasmania as well as portions of New Zealand's South Island. In fact, the last contact of the shadow with Earth occurs just to the west of the South Island, in the Tasman Sea. Dec. 10 – A total eclipse of the moon: The side of the Earth that is facing the moon during this event is chiefly the Pacific Ocean, with eastern and central Asia seeing this as an evening event, while for North Americans this is a pre-sunrise affair. From a spot in the Philippine Sea, south of Japan and east of Taiwan, the moon will stand directly overhead during the middle of the eclipse. For those living in the Eastern Time Zone of the U.S. and Canada, the moon will have already dropped out of sight beyond the west-northwest horizon for those living near and along the Atlantic Seaboard. Over the central U.S. and Canada, the moon will become progressively immersed in the umbra as it approaches its setting; the farther west you go, the larger the obscuration before the moon goes out of sight. The western U.S. and Canada will be able to see the total phase. Dec. 13 – Another low-light meteor shower: The Geminid meteor shower, now ranked as the best of the annual meteor showers, has the misfortune of occurring during the time of a waning gibbous moon, which will pretty much squelch all but the brightest meteors. Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York. SPACE.com offers rich and compelling content about space science, travel and exploration as well as astronomy, technology, business news and more. The site boasts a variety of popular features including our space image of the day and other space pictures,space videos, Top 10s, Trivia, podcasts and Amazing Images submitted by our users. 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| Lunar eclipse could boost underdog meteor shower - msnbc.com Posted: 20 Dec 2010 07:24 AM PST When skywatchers think of meteor showers during the month of December, they immediately think of the Geminids, which over the years have evolved into the most prolific and reliable of the dozen or so annual meteor displays that take place. And yet, there is also another notable meteor shower that occurs during December that, in contrast, hardly gets much notice at all: the December Ursids. The peak of this meteor display usually occurs on the night of Dec. 22 to Dec. 23. While the Ursids would normally be difficult to see during this time because of bright light from the full moon, the rare upcoming total lunar eclipse may provide a special chance to catch a glimpse of the Ursid meteor shower. Check this NASA lunar eclipse chart to see how visible the eclipse will be from different regions around the world. The Ursids are so named because they appear to fan out from the vicinity of the bright orange star Kochab, in the constellation of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear. Kochab is the brighter of the two outer stars in the bowl of the Little Dipper (the other being Pherkad), that seem to march in a circle like sentries around Polaris, the North Star. These meteors are sometimes called the Umids, in a rather unsuccessful attempt to make clear that they originate from the direction of Ursa Minor, not Ursa Major. Often neglected And since the Ursids seem to fan out from this particular region of the sky, you can look for these faint, medium-speed meteors all through the night if you care to. The fact that they reach their peak on Dec. 22 to Dec. 23, however, is not good news for prospective Ursid watchers in 2010, as this coincides with the first full night of winter, with a brilliant nearly full moon that will shine in the sky all night from about 5:00 p.m. local time onward. This is unfortunate because the underappreciated Ursids "badly need observing," according to the British Astronomical Association. That observers have neglected the Ursids is not surprising. Everything about them is wintry. The Ursid meteor shower usually coincides with the winter solstice, and is best seen by polar bears since they come from near the celestial north pole. In contrast to the Geminids, which can produce up to 120 meteors per hour, the usual Ursid rate is but a fraction of that; generally speaking they produce about a dozen or so per hour at their peak. The Ursids are actually the dusty debris shed by the periodic comet Tuttle 8P/Tuttle, which circles the sun in a 13.6-year orbit and was last seen in early 2008. On occasion, the Earth has interacted with a dense, narrow stream of particles shed by this comet, which has caused brief outbursts of Ursid meteors numbering in the dozens per hour, but no such interaction is expected this year. The eclipse will help! But wait! The night before the Ursid peak (Dec. 20 to Dec. 21) is the long-awaited total eclipse of the moon. In fact, for 72 minutes, while the moon is completely immersed in the Earth's shadow, the moon will appear anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 times dimmer and will allow many of the fainter stars and even the Milky Way to temporarily appear. [ Amazing photos of a total lunar eclipse ] And possibly a few Ursid meteors too! Usually not many people would be outside on a cold late-December night looking up at the sky, but the eclipse will be the feature attraction that will draw many outdoors. So if, while you're admiring the totally eclipsed moon, you happen to also catch sight of a few meteors streaking from out of the northern part of the sky, congratulations! You've probably caught sight of the Ursids. © 2010 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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