Asteroid 433 Eros made a close approach to Earth the morning of January 31st coming within 0.17 AU (15 million miles) of our planet. In this set of images taken that morning, the bright moving dot near the center of the field is the 21 mile long Eros. Somewhere on that tiny point of light rests a United States spacecraft -- Near Shoemaker -- which touched down on the asteroid's surface on February 12, 2001 after completing 230 orbits around Eros.
 
In the animation you will also notice over 20 streaks of light moving almost horizontally across the field of view. What we did not realize at the time of imaging was that Eros was at approximately the declination of geosynchronous communication satellites! These satellites are orbiting some 22,236 miles above the earth in the "Clark belt." We were able to identify most of the satellites seen and found quite a variety.

Included in the video are Brazilian satellites (Brazilsat B2, Star One C2); American satellites (Galaxy 11); Canadian satellites (Nimiq 4, Anik F1); Venezuelan satellites (Venesat-1); weather satellites (GEOS 12); television satellites (DirecTV 1-R); radio satellites (XM 3, Sirius FM); and Internet satellites (WildBlue – 1).

A meteor streaks across the skies above Huntsville, Ala. (NASA)

The night sky is constantly changing. The Earth rotates and revolves about the sun, creating a backdrop of stars that is always in motion. The moon grows large in the sky, and then smaller again, in a seemingly endless cycle. Now and then, brilliant streaks of light can be seen in the night sky, there and gone again in a split second. These "shooting stars", also called meteors, are seen when bits of rock and ice, the leftovers from voyaging comets and asteroids, enter the atmosphere and ablate, or burn up. These tiny travelers, and the light they produce, are the concern of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office, or MEO, at the Marshall Space Flight Center which is responsible for understanding the meteoroid environment spacecrafts may encounter during missions.

To more closely track and study bright meteors called fireballs, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network watches the skies with six specialized black and white video cameras set up in four states scattered across the Southeast and Southwest. The network's multiple cameras provide overlapping views of the night sky, thus able to detect the same fireball to allow calculation of its location, speed, and orbit. The network, established by the Meteoroid Environment Office in 2008, sees several multi-station meteors (those detected by more than one camera) each night. The resulting fireball data -- in the form of images, movies, diagrams, and text files -- is posted online daily. The office uses this data to construct models of the meteoroid environment, something very important to spacecraft designers.

With cameras now in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and New Mexico, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network plans to expand into North Carolina and beyond in 2012. The ultimate goal is a network of about 15 cameras in the United States in science centers, planetaria, and schools. To engage students, and promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines in the classroom, the MEO has created a workshop for educators with information about meteors, a description of the network, and suggestions for how to use the data in the classroom.

The wide-field meteor camera at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center recorded these two simultaneous Quadrantid meteors on Jan. 4 at approximately 5 a.m. EST. Moving at 92,000 mph, the meteors flashed across the field of view in just over a second.

Early on the morning of Jan. 3, 2012, a beautiful meteor was seen traveling across the skies over Huntsville, Ala. Moving slowly at "only" 18.9 km/s -- or 42,000 mph -- the meteor was recorded at approximately 10:34:16 UTC in an allsky camera at the Marshall Space Flight Center. It started 88.5 km/55 miles up and was last detected at 79.8 km/50 miles up. The meteor had a mass of 22 grams and was about an inch in diameter -- fairly big for a meteor -- and its orbit went out to the asteroid belt.

The view below shows the meteor's path captured by an allsky color camera, also located at the Marshall Center.

Image credits: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environments Office/Bill Cooke and Danielle Moser

Hazy skies did little to dim the brightness of this Gemind meteor, which graced the skies over southern New Mexico on the night of Dec. 14 around 7:28 p.m. MST. Moving at 80,000 mph, the 3/4 inch meteor -- a piece of the asteroid 3200 Phaethon -- flared brighter than the planet Venus before burning up 47 miles above the U.S./Mexico border.

Image credit: Marshall Space Flight Center, Meteoroid Environments Office, Bill Cooke

The next full moon is known as the Cold Moon, the Long Night Moon, or the Moon Before Yule. The moon will be "opposite" the sun at 9:38 a.m. EST on Saturday, Dec. 10. The moon will appear full for about three days around this time, from the evening of Thursday, Dec. 8 through the morning -- and possibly the evening -- of Sunday, Dec. 11.

On Dec.10, the moon will be so "opposite" the sun from the Earth that it will pass through the shadow of the Earth. The Earth's shadow will begin to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the moon at about 6:34 a.m. EST, but the U.S. East Coast will not be able to tell that the moon appears dimmer before it sets at 7:08 a.m. EST. The full shadow of the Earth (called the umbra) does not start to fall on the moon until about 7:46 a.m. EST, well after the moon has set for the U.S. East Coast. Even for the U.S. West Coast, the eclipse will be near moonset, making this a difficult eclipse to view. The extended period with reduced sunlight, including 51 minutes in the full shadow of the Earth, presents a challenging environment for spacecraft at the moon (LRO, the twin GRAIL spacecraft) that rely upon sunlight for heat and solar power. Because the two ARTEMIS spacecraft are in highly elliptical orbits around the moon, it is not clear if or how they will be impacted.

Europeans call the December full moon the Moon before Yule. Yule is an old northern European winter festival that is now associated with Christmas. The Native American names for the full moon in December -- as reported in the Farmer's Almanac -- are the Cold Moon or the Long Night Moon. The Cold Moon gets its name because December is the month when it really starts to get cold, although our coldest average temperatures are in January. The Long Night Moon gets its name because the full moon in December occurs near the solstice, which has the longest night of the year. The full moon takes a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite to the low sun, so the moon will be above the horizon longer than at other times of the year.

A full moon over Earth, seen by astronaut Ron Garan from the International Space Station. (NASA)