Winter Solstice sky spectacular!
Dec. 9th, 2010 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ferineMeteors, Full Lunar Eclipse to Dazzle December
by Lauren Frayer
AOL News (Dec. 9) -- Holiday stargazers are in for a December treat: a huge meteor shower and the year's only full lunar eclipse.
The annual Geminid meteor shower -- clusters of space rock hurtling toward the Earth's atmosphere and burning up on contact -- occurs around the end of our calendar. The effect is that of thousands of shooting stars streaking across the night sky. The shower gets its name from Gemini, the constellation of stars from which it appears to emerge.
The Geminids are unusual in that they're thought to be the remnants of a passing asteroid, not a comet. This year the meteor display is forecast to peak around Dec. 14. But the shower lasts for a few weeks before and after that date, and there have been several reports already of people witnessing huge fireballs streaking across wintry skies.
On Wednesday night, callers phoned into the BBC from Scotland, England and Wales, many of them saying they'd spotted a meteor around 5:40 p.m. local time on their way home from work.
"At first I thought it was a firework, but it was traveling at a funny angle," Tina Baxter told the network. "It was a bit scary because it was so massive and incredibly bright."
Another Briton, Keith Levitt, said he initially thought the meteor was a light on a plane overhead. "I've never seen anything so large and so close," he told the BBC. "I've seen shooting stars, but this was quite spectacular because it was so large."
An ocean away, another stargazer in Rhode Island said she too saw a fireball streak across the sky before dawn on Tuesday, as she was driving to work.
"I didn't know what it was," Simonne Tassone told local TV station WPRI. "It was so large. ... It had a bluish green tinge to it."
After the Geminids, night sky gazers can look forward to a full lunar eclipse that will coincide with the winter solstice Dec. 21.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes through a point in its orbit when the Earth is directly between it and the sun, and the moon is in the shadow of the Earth. Because some of the sun's rays still reach the outer edge of the moon, it appears as if it's dimmed but glowing.
In the Eastern time zone of North America, the moon will be in total eclipse from about 2:40 to 3:53 a.m. Dec. 21, Space.com reported.
The entirety of the total lunar eclipse will be visible from all of North and South America, the northern and western part of Europe, and a small part of northeast Asia, according to Space.com, which said North Americans will have to wait until 2014 to see another one so spectacular.
by Lauren Frayer
AOL News (Dec. 9) -- Holiday stargazers are in for a December treat: a huge meteor shower and the year's only full lunar eclipse.
The annual Geminid meteor shower -- clusters of space rock hurtling toward the Earth's atmosphere and burning up on contact -- occurs around the end of our calendar. The effect is that of thousands of shooting stars streaking across the night sky. The shower gets its name from Gemini, the constellation of stars from which it appears to emerge.
The Geminids are unusual in that they're thought to be the remnants of a passing asteroid, not a comet. This year the meteor display is forecast to peak around Dec. 14. But the shower lasts for a few weeks before and after that date, and there have been several reports already of people witnessing huge fireballs streaking across wintry skies.
On Wednesday night, callers phoned into the BBC from Scotland, England and Wales, many of them saying they'd spotted a meteor around 5:40 p.m. local time on their way home from work.
"At first I thought it was a firework, but it was traveling at a funny angle," Tina Baxter told the network. "It was a bit scary because it was so massive and incredibly bright."
Another Briton, Keith Levitt, said he initially thought the meteor was a light on a plane overhead. "I've never seen anything so large and so close," he told the BBC. "I've seen shooting stars, but this was quite spectacular because it was so large."
An ocean away, another stargazer in Rhode Island said she too saw a fireball streak across the sky before dawn on Tuesday, as she was driving to work.
"I didn't know what it was," Simonne Tassone told local TV station WPRI. "It was so large. ... It had a bluish green tinge to it."
After the Geminids, night sky gazers can look forward to a full lunar eclipse that will coincide with the winter solstice Dec. 21.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes through a point in its orbit when the Earth is directly between it and the sun, and the moon is in the shadow of the Earth. Because some of the sun's rays still reach the outer edge of the moon, it appears as if it's dimmed but glowing.
In the Eastern time zone of North America, the moon will be in total eclipse from about 2:40 to 3:53 a.m. Dec. 21, Space.com reported.
The entirety of the total lunar eclipse will be visible from all of North and South America, the northern and western part of Europe, and a small part of northeast Asia, according to Space.com, which said North Americans will have to wait until 2014 to see another one so spectacular.
