Aster and the Black Moon
(Page 2 of 5)
August/September 1996
By Fred Schaaf
When you witness a meteor, you are seeing a bit of space dust or space rock burning up from friction as it enters our upper atmosphere at speeds often much in excess of 100,000 mph. The Perseid shower often produces the highest hourly rates of the year—if you get a clear night far out in the country you can see dozens of them per hour (plus many meteors from other directions—count these separately).
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The Perseids are quite plentiful for several nights. But get your lawn chair and a friend out with you especially on the night of August 11-12. There is even a small chance of seeing a great outburst of hundreds of Perseids in the evening of August 11 this year.
Harvest Moon Eclipse, with Saturn
Another night for skywatchers to mark on their calendar this year is the night of September 26-27. It would be enough if that were just the night of a total lunar eclipse. But it happens to be an eclipse of the harvest moon, and that night happens to be the one when Saturn is at its brightest,
biggest, and best for the year — right next to the dimmed and beautifully reddened moon.
Harvest moon is the full moon nearest to the autumn equinox, the start of autumn. Usually the moon rises about an hour later each night, but around the time of harvest moon the interval is much less. For several nights the moon comes up around nightfall, providing farmers with a prolonged period of light in which to harvest.
Harvest moon happens every year, but a total eclipse of the moon doesn't. There were no total lunar eclipses in 1994 or 1995, and there will be no total lunars visible from the United States after this year until 2000. Some of you readers will vividly recall the total lunar eclipse back on April 3, 1996, but only some of you; for even in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states the event occurred just after moonrise, and across the rest of the United States the total portion of the eclipse was ending or already over by the time the moon came up.
The eclipse on the night of September 26-27 will be more fully available to more Americans. People from the Great Plains on east get to see all of the total portion of the eclipse, and the western part of the contiguous United States can view some of the total portion.
The accompanying timetable shows that the eclipse takes place entirely in the evening in the United States, except for on the East Coast, where the last trace of Earth's central shadow, the umbra, moves off the moon at 12:36 A.M. EDT.
What's most fascinating about total lunar eclipses is seeing how dark they get, and what colors appear on the moon. This eclipse is likely to be a fairly light one, and its overall color a pink or orange. But there may be dark patches in Earth's shadow and many lovely tints visible with naked eye, binoculars, and telescope.
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