NASA – Page 4 – Watch the Skies

Annual Orionid Meteor Shower Peaks This Week

Orionid meteors appear every year around this time when Earth travels through an area of space littered with debris from Halley’s Comet. This year the peak will occur on the night of Wednesday, Oct. 21 into the morning of Thursday, Oct. 22.

“The Orionids will probably show weak activity this year,” says Bill Cooke of the NASA Meteoroid Environments Office . “Bits of comet dust hitting the atmosphere will probably give us about a dozen meteors per hour.”

The best time to look for Orionid meteors is just before sunrise on Thursday, October 22nd, when Earth encounters the densest part of Halley’s debris stream.

Observing is easy: Wake up a few hours before dawn, go outside and look up. No telescope is necessary to see Orionids shooting across the sky. Viewing conditions are favorable this year, as the light from the gibbous Moon should set by 2 a.m. EDT time, permitting good viewing just before dawn when the rates will be at their highest.

A live stream of the night sky from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. will be available via Ustream beginning October 21, at 10 p.m. EDT. The live feed is an alternative for stargazers experiencing bad weather or light-polluted night skies. If the weather in Huntsville is clear, Orionids may be seen in the feed as early as 11:30 p.m. EDT, though the hours before dawn should show the most Orionid activity.

The display will be framed by some of the prettiest stars in the night sky. In addition to Orionids, you’ll see the Dog Star Sirius, bright winter constellations such as Orion, Gemini, and Taurus, and the planets Jupiter and Venus. Even if the shower is a dud, the rest of the sky is dynamite.

Set your alarm, brew some hot chocolate and enjoy the show!

An Orionid meteor recorded by the NASA All Sky Fireball Network station on top of Mt. Lemmon, Arizona on October 13, 2015 at 04:31 a.m. EDT.

An Orionid meteor recorded by the NASA All Sky Fireball Network station on top of Mt. Lemmon, Arizona on October 13, 2015 at 04:31 a.m. EDT. Orionid meteors appear to come from the direction of the constellation Orion, circled in orange.

September 27th Lunar Eclispe

A meteor flashes by the Moon at the beginning of the September 27, total lunar eclipse. From the NASA meteor camera in Mayhill, New Mexico.

NASA Marshall Team Observing and Taking Questions about Upcoming Lunar Eclipse

In the Americas on Sunday night, Sept. 27, we will be treated to a lunar eclipse with its beautiful orange and red colors, a prelude to the fall color of leaves in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. This eclipse will straddle midnight on Sept. 27, depending on where you live. If observing close to the Greenwich Meridian in the U.K., the eclipse begins just after midnight, in the morning of Sept. 28 at 00:11 Universal Time (UT). But Sept. 28, 00:11 UT, translates to Sept. 27, 8:11 p.m. EDT and 7:11 p.m. CDT.

All of the Americas are well placed to see this eclipse. The table below lists eclipse timing details. If you have questions about this eclipse, you will have an opportunity to ask experts at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama!

About Lunar Eclipses

Throughout human culture, lunar eclipses have been viewed with awe and sometimes fear. Today we know that a total lunar eclipse happens when the full moon passes through the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, the umbra. Near the beginning and ending of an eclipse, the moon moves through a less dark portion of the shadow, called the penumbra, which is hardly visible. The partial phase begins (ends) when the moon enters (leaves) the umbra. When the moon has completely passed into Earth’s shadow, the eclipse is in its total phase.

The length of the eclipse is dependent on the position of the moon along an Earth-sun line. The longest eclipses occur when the moon is directly in line with Earth and sun. The shortest eclipses are when the moon is either above or below that line. The moon does not make its own light; it only reflects the light it receives from the sun. During a lunar eclipse, the moon appears less and less bright as sunlight is blocked by Earth. As totality approaches, more and more of the sunlight reaching the moon does so indirectly; it is refracted around the “edges”of Earth, through our atmosphere.

Because the light is going through the Earth’s atmosphere, almost all colors except red are “filtered” out and the eclipsed moon appears reddish or dark brown. The filtering is done by particulates in the atmosphere; when there have been a lot of fires and/or volcanic eruptions, lunar eclipses will be darker and redder. This eerie but harmless effect has earned the tongue-in-cheek nickname “blood moon.”

Supermoon – No, not SuperMan, SuperMoon

The moon orbits Earth in an ellipse that is almost circular (as is the orbit of most planets around the sun), but because the orbit is elliptical, sometimes the moon is closest to Earth (perigee) and sometimes farthest from Earth (apogee). The position of the moon for the Sept. 27/28 eclipse is very close to perigee, so it will appear a bit larger in the sky than a month from now.

You could measure this, with simple items from around the house. Try using a coin (or button or marble) at arm’s length to block the full moon, do this at a particular time, then try it again for the next several months at full moon, at the same time. If the coin (or other item) covers the moon on Sept. 27 (2015), it will more than cover the moon at later times, proving that the moon is smaller and thus farther away. Also, because the moon is at perigee (close approach to Earth) a supermoon will cause slightly larger tidal effects.

How to View and Ask Questions

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will offer a live Ustream view of the lunar eclipse on the Sept. 27, the night of the event, via the Marshall Center Ustream feed. The live feed is an alternative for observers caught with bad weather or light-polluted night skies.

Mitzi Adams, a solar physicist at Marshall, will talk about what viewers are seeing on screen and answering questions from Twitter. To ask a question, use the hashtag: “AskNASA.”

Meteor Over Alabama Brighter than Crescent Moon

On September 16, at 8:22:25 PM local time, NASA meteor cameras in north Georgia and western North Carolina detected a bright fireball over middle Alabama. First seen at an altitude of 45 miles above Paul M. Grist State Park, near Selma, Alabama, the 6 inch diameter chunk of asteroid moved east at a speed of 38,000 miles per hour before burning up some 28 miles above northern Elmore County. At its most intense, the meteor was even brighter than a crescent Moon.

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West Virginia Fireball

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A bright meteor occurred over West Virginia last night at 9:27 EDT. It was seen across Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland! NASA’s Pennsylvania and Ohio all sky cameras caught it near the edge of the field-of-view, but what also saw it was an EarthCam located on the Washington Monument!

Perseids in the Skies over Marshall Space Flight Center

A composite image combines about 120 meteor images taken by the NASA All Sky Fireball Network station at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. on August 13, 2015. The majority of the meteors are Perseids. Danielle Moser of the Meteoroid Environment Office compiled the composite image.

Perseids Are Already Appearing in the Huntsville Sky

This composite image shows the meteors detected by the NASA All Sky Fireball Network station here in Huntsville, Alabama this morning. The majority of the meteors are Perseids, but a handful belong to the Northern Delta Aquariid, Southern Delta Aquariid, Alpha Capricornid, and Southern Iota Aquariid meteor showers that are also active.