Get Ready for the 2016 Geminids!

The Geminids are a meteor shower that occurs in December every year. The best night to see the shower is Dec. 13 into the early hours of Dec. 14. The Geminid meteor shower is caused by a stream of debris left by the asteroid, 3200 Phaethon. When the Earth passes through the trails of dust every December left by 3200 Phaethon, we see the Geminid meteor shower as the dust (meteoroids) burn up in Earth’s atmosphere creating meteors. Geminids travel through Earth’s atmosphere at 78,000 mph and burn up far above the surface.

To observe the Geminids (if it’s not cloudy), get away from bright lights, lay on your back and look up. Let your eyes get adjusted to the dark – you will see more meteors that way. Meteors can generally be seen all over the sky so don’t look in one particular direction. This year’s shower is also on the same night as a full (super) moon so viewing the shower will be more difficult. If you see a meteor, try and trace it backwards. If you end up in the constellation Gemini, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a Geminid.

Given clear weather and dark skies, the Geminid meteor shower can be seen by most of the world, though it is best viewed by observers in the northern hemisphere. This year’s bright moon will wash out all but the brightest Geminids, reducing the rate you can see them significantly. You can expect to see an average of one Geminid every few minutes in dark skies at the shower peak in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, the Geminid radiant does not climb very high about the horizon, so observers will see fewer Geminids than their northern counterparts. Most of North America will miss the traditional peak, but because the Geminid activity is broad, good rates will be seen between 10:30 p.m. on Dec. 13 and dawn local time on the morning of Dec. 14. The most meteors should be visible around 2:00 a.m. local time on Dec. 14.

At 2 p.m. CT/3 p.m. ET, engineers & scientists from NASA’s Meteor Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will answer questions on the Geminids during a Reddit Ask Me Anything.

If you are in an area with cloudy skies, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will broadcast footage of the shower (pending clear skies here) starting at 8 p.m. Dec. 13 until 6 a.m. on Dec. 14 on Marshall’s Ustream account. You can also see Geminid meteors on NASA’s All Sky Fireball network page. Follow’s NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office on Facebook for information on meteor showers and fireballs throughout the year.
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Geminid Meteor Shower to Peak Dec 13; NASA Experts to Answer Questions Dec. 12

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The annual Geminid meteor shower will peak during the overnight hours of Dec. 13-14, with best viewing typically around 2 a.m. To learn why meteors and comets are important to NASA, the public is invited to join a live Reddit Ask-Me-Anything event at 2 p.m. Dec. 12. Answering your questions will be NASA meteor experts Bill Cooke, Danielle Moser and Rhiannon Blaauw, all from NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. For viewers experiencing clouds, meteor shower footage will be broadcast live from 8 p.m. Dec. 13 until 6 a.m. on Dec. 14 on Marshall’s Ustream account. Social media followers interested in joining the online conversation can tweet questions to Marshall’s Twitter account or share Geminid images by uploading them to the Geminid Meteor photo group on Marshall’s Flickr account.

NASA’s Marshall Center Celebrates International Observe the Moon Night

On Saturday, Oct. 8, from 5:30 to 9 p.m. the public and media are invited to attend the 6th annual International Observe the Moon Night celebration, hosted by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center at the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, both in Huntsville, Alabama.

The free event will include moon-related and solar system exhibits and hands-on activities for children and adults. Activities will include an out-of-this-world photo booth, airbrush tattoo station, and a meet and greet with Janet Ivey from “Janet’s Planet” on PBS. Live music will be provided by DJ Shell. Several large amateur telescopes will be set up to view the moon, stars, and other visible planets. Visitors can also take a virtual 3-D trip to the moon with the astronomy van, offering a magnified, command-module-like view of the lunar surface. The family movie, “Home,” will begin at dusk.

A panel discussion titled: “Planets, Moons & Meteorites Oh My!” will begin at 7:15 p.m. in the National Geographic Theater and will feature Marshall speakers Mitzi Adams, solar physicist; Dr. Barbara Cohen, planetary sceintist; Dr. Bill Cooke, manager of the Meteoroid Environments Office; and Dr. Renee Weber, planetary scientist.

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is the official visitor center for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

For more information on NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, visit https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/home/index.html.

For more information on the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, visit http://rocketcenter.com.

Full Moon Photographed From Apollo 11 Spacecraft
Full Moon Photographed From Apollo 11 Spacecraft

 

Look Up! Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks Aug. 11-12

Make plans now to stay up late or set the alarm early next week to see a cosmic display of “shooting stars” light up the night sky. Known for it’s fast and bright meteors, the annual Perseid meteor shower is anticipated to be one of the best potential meteor viewing opportunities this year.

The Perseids show up every year in August when Earth ventures through trails of debris left behind by an ancient comet. This year, Earth may be in for a closer encounter than usual with the comet trails that result in meteor shower, setting the stage for a spectacular display.

“Forecasters are predicting a Perseid outburst this year with double normal rates on the night of Aug. 11-12,” said Bill Cooke with NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office in Huntsville, Alabama. “Under perfect conditions, rates could soar to 200 meteors per hour.”

An outburst is a meteor shower with more meteors than usual. The last Perseid outburst occurred in 2009.

How to Watch the Perseids

The best way to see the Perseids is to go outside between midnight and dawn on the morning of Aug. 12. Allow about 45 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the dark. Lie on your back and look straight up. Increased activity may also be seen on Aug. 12-13.

For stargazers experiencing cloudy or light-polluted skies, a live broadcast of the Perseid meteor shower will be available via Ustream overnight on Aug. 11-12 and Aug. 13-14, beginning at 10 p.m. EDT.

Read more about the Perseids here.

An outburst of Perseid meteors lights up the sky in August 2009 in this time-lapse image. Stargazers expect a similar outburst during next week’s Perseid meteor shower, which will be visible overnight on Aug. 11 and 12. Credits: NASA/JPL
An outburst of Perseid meteors lights up the sky in August 2009 in this time-lapse image. Stargazers expect a similar outburst during next week’s Perseid meteor shower, which will be visible overnight on Aug. 11 and 12.
Credits: NASA/JPL

Fireball Over Arizona

For a few seconds early Thursday, night turned into day as an extremely bright fireball lit the pre-dawn sky over much of Arizona, blinding all-sky meteor cameras as far away as western New Mexico.

Based on the latest data, a small asteroid estimated at 5 feet (1-2 meters) in diameter – with a mass of a few tons and a kinetic energy of approximately half a kiloton – entered Earth’s atmosphere above Arizona just before 4 a.m. local (MST) time. NASA estimates that the asteroid was moving at about 40,200 miles per hour (64,700 kilometers per hour).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCldOLFJZ8[/embedyt]

Video obtained from the NASA meteor camera situated at the MMT Observatory on the site of the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, located on Mount Hopkins, Arizona, in the Santa Rita Mountains.

Read more here.

Fireball Seen Over Tennessee and North Carolina

We observed a fireball the morning of May 4 around 12:50am EDT, traveling southwest at about 77,000 mph over the Nantahala National Forest on the Tennessee/North Carolina state line. At its brightest point, it rivaled the full moon. According to Dr. Bill Cooke in NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. , “The fireball was bright enough to be seen through clouds, which is an attention getter. In Chickamauga, Ga., one would have thought it was a flash of lightning lighting up the clouds beneath.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teIZcESrNBQ[/embedyt]

NASA to Provide Live Coverage, Interviews, and Social Media for March 8 Solar Eclipse

Editor’s note: You can watch both the solar eclipse program and the raw video feed on the Watch the March 8 Solar Eclipse Live page.

NASA, in partnership with the Exploratorium Science Center in San Francisco, will host activities around the March 8 total solar eclipse, including opportunities to talk with solar scientists and live coverage of the eclipse originating from Woleai island in Micronesia.

At 1 p.m. on Tuesday, March 8, solar scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will participate in a Reddit Ask Me Anything.

NASA Television will begin coverage at 8 p.m. on March 8. The period of total eclipse, called totality, will occur from 8:38 to 8:42 p.m.

Twitter, Google+ and Facebook users will be able to join the conversation and ask questions using the hashtag #eclipse2016. The NASA Twitter account for the eclipse is @NASASunEarth. The public will be able to tag and share their images of the solar eclipse on the NASA Flickr group at: https://www.flickr.com/groups/eclipse2016/.

The total eclipse will be visible in parts of South East Asia and a partial eclipse will be visible in parts of Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and America Samoa. An eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly between Earth and the sun. When the moon’s shadow falls on Earth, observers within that shadow see the moon block a portion of the sun’s light.

Information about eclipses is available online at:

https://www.nasa.gov/eclipse

For solar eclipse video resources, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1VR3Fvk

2013 total solar eclipse. Credits: Copyright Pavel Štarha, Kristián Molnár
2013 total solar eclipse.
Credits: Copyright Pavel Štarha, Kristián Molnár

Five Planets Align in Early Morning Sky

The graphic below illustrates the five planets as they are visible, with the naked eye, from Huntsville, Alabama.  It shows their positions in the sky around 6:30 AM during the week of January 18 and continuing for the next few days. Mercury will be close to the Sun, over in the East, and Jupiter will be over in the West, with Venus, Saturn, and Mars between the two. Pluto is near Mercury, but is invisible to the eye, requiring a telescope for viewing.

The last time an alignment such as this occurred was about 10 years ago. This pre-sunrise configuration will be similar for other northern latitudes.

In the graphic, the yellow line is the ecliptic, which is the plane of the Earth’s orbit. The orbits of the major planets lie close to this plane, which is why they appear close to the ecliptic in the night sky.

Image generated by Bill Cooke using SkySafari Pro software.
Image generated by Bill Cooke using SkySafari Pro software.

Quadrantid Meteor Over North Georgia

NASA’s All Sky cameras captured this image of a Quadrantid meteor overnight, the meteor was moving at 93,000 miles per hour. This 1 inch diameter member of the Quadrantid meteor shower leaves a brilliant streak in the north Georgia skies before burning up 44 miles above Earth’s surface. The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks overnight on January 4.quadrantid

Bright Fireball Detected by 6 NASA All Sky Cameras

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=http://youtu.be/wGE7OQSCkyA[/embedyt]

We have received numerous reports concerning a bright fireball that occurred over Georgia at 5:33:55 PM CST (6:33:55 PM EST). All 6 NASA all sky meteor cameras in the Southeast picked up the meteor at an altitude of 50 miles above the town of Georgia (SE of Atlanta). From its brightness, it is estimated that this piece of an asteroid weighed at least 150 pounds and was over 16 inches in  diameter. It entered the atmosphere at a steep angle and moved almost due south at a speed of 29,000 miles per hour. The NASA cameras tracked it to an altitude of 17 miles above the town of Locust Grove, where it had slowed to a speed of 9000 miles per hour, at which point the meteor ceased producing light by burning up. It is possible that fragments of this object survived to reach the ground as meteorites.

A more detailed analysis will be performed tomorrow and further details will follow if this analysis still indicates the possibility of a meteorite fall.

Ground track, still images from the cameras, and a movie from the NASA camera located in Cartersville, Georgia attached.

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