EVENING PLANETS: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look southwest. The two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, are shining through the twilight side by side. You'll want to keep an eye on these two because they are drawing noticeably closer together every night. Venus and Jupiter are converging on a patch of sky in Sagittarius where they will have a spectacular double-conjunction with the Moon at the end of the month. Don't wait until then, though. Visit http://spaceweather.com for sky maps and start watching now.
LEONID METEOR WATCH: The Leonid meteor shower peaks this year on Nov. 17th and 18th. Bright moonlight will probably spoil the show, but not necessarily. Researchers who study Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, the source of the Leonids, say Earth is going to pass through one or two of the comet's dusty filaments. Peak rates of 20 to 100 meteors per hour are possible during the early hours of Nov. 17th (especially 0000-0200 UT) and again during the waning hours of Nov. 18th (around 2130 UT). These times favor sky watchers in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Smaller numbers of Leonids could appear between the anticipated peak times. Meteor enthusiasts everywhere should monitor the sky on Nov. 17th and 18th; the hours before local dawn are usually best.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Meteors, and planets!
Very nice display, courteous nature. From SpaceWeather.com:
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4 comments:
Oooooh--I'll be watching! THis will give me a little extra push to get up early in the mornings, before it's light, and walk.
That's a cool site, but I can't seem to find anything about meteor showers on it. Maybe I missed something?
Hi folks: there's more cool astro stuff coming up...
Livia: over on the right hand side of the spaceweather page, there's a search box to plug in the date. The index page gets updated every couple of days. The best thing to do is to subscribe to the mailing. You'll get a short email in your inbox every couple of days describing what's going on up the sky. This is really good for short term events and phenomena, like auroras and spaceship flyovers.
Hey Gene, saw this, thought you might like it: Jan. 9, 1643: Astronomer Sees Ashen Light of Venus (what a poetic phrase).
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