Orionid Meteor Shower Hits Peak This Week - http://clapway.com/2015/10/20/orionid-meteor-shower-hits-peak-this-week/

Expect to see celestial fireworks with this year’s Orionid Meteor Shower. Every year as the Earth cruises past an expanse of space littered with the remains of the infamous Halley’s Comet, the skies are lit with fast moving beams of light. NASA announced that the shower will begin on Wednesday and continue on till Thursday at dawn.

The Time Earth is Closest to Halley’s Comet Debris Stream

The best time for viewing will be on Thursday, October 21st just before dawn, when the shower will reach its peak and it’ll be easiest to spot the lights. This will be the point where the Earth encounters the densest part of Halley’s debris stream.

Slooh Astronomer Bob Berman adds that the Orionid meteor showers are popular with stargazers because if the fact that the shower itself is paying homage to the most famous comet of all time, Halley’s Comet, and it was the first comet ever known. These meteors, only tiny bits of ice and dust that fell from the comet and seeped into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Stargazers, Keep A Weather Eye

Slooh is a community observatory that has connected a wide array of telescopes for internet use, declared that at its peak, the shower will show as many as 30 meteors per hour, visible from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. However, stargazers should keep their eyes peeled. These are fast-shooting objects that would be easy to miss, so it is advised to anyone watching to keep a weather eye on the horizon, especially at dawn since light pollution is scarce, and any observers may be able to catch a meteor every few minutes.

Orionid meteors make an appearance yearly at around this time, and for this particular round, NASA says you won’t even need a telescope to see the show, because despite the meteor count being lower this year, it will be bright and easy to spot with the naked eye.

A livestream will be available to see the show from Wednesday, October 21st, at 10pm EDT.

Next Up, the Leonids Meteor Shower

The next meteor shower in the calendar is the Leonids, and its peak is expected to be from midnight until dawn on November 18th.

Make Sure to Snap A Few Pictures While You Stargaze, Consider Taking the Dealstock Selfie Stick With You!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtbfDSRbTts

Orionid Meteor Shower Hits Peak This Week

Meteor Fireballs Await You In the Perseid Meteor Shower - http://clapway.com/2015/08/02/meteor-fireballs-await-you-in-the-perseid-meteor-shower-111/

Astronomers don’t spend all of their nights staring at a few favorite stars, or searching for nova or navel-gazing. Sometimes we’re treated to something more obvious; something anyone can do without any training or study: meteor showers. This August, the Perseid meteor shower will peak during the night between August 12th and 13th, so unless you’re in the middle of monsoon season, why not make the time to enjoy it?

This year the Perseid meteor shower is slated to be the best of its kind in five years. Why? Two things. Firstly, there will be no Lunar interference, as it will be absent from the night sky, and the Earth will have made an unusually close pass through the stream of space debris leftover from Comet 109/P Swift-Tuttle, the cause of the shower. This highly anticipated close pass means that the meteor shower will last for several hours, much longer than the Perseid shower usually does.

PERSEIDS AND PERSEUS

Meteor showers are given a name with respect to the constellation they compliment with their radiant, majestic display, because this is where it might appear to the eye they are being generated from. The Perseids are thusly named because they occur within the constellation Perseus, in the northern part of the horizon. The constellation rises above the horizon just before 10 P.M., and will reach its highest point a few minutes before dawn. This means the best hours to view the show will be between midnight and morning twilight.

You may not need to know where Perseus the radiant is in the sky, since he will obviously be radiating enough beauty on his own to attract even the first-time skywatcher, but if you’d like to find him ahead of time, you could look for the easily identified W of Cassiopeia. Perseus will rise to the right of the W. If that doesn’t help, you can trace the path of the meteors back to their respective origins should guide your eyes to Perseus’ approximate position.

PERSEID SHOWER TO BE HEAVY AND EXPLOSIVE

Since the meteor shower is going to be so high-frequency and last so long, that the meteor shower will be viewable for several nights before and after, albeit of lesser intensity. When you do go out to look for the shower, make sure you face Northeast. As Perseus climbs into the sky, the direction of your gaze will matter less and less, as the meteors will appear to be falling all over the sea. Indeed, between 2 a.m. and sunrise, you might do better looking south, because by then any meteors you see will be from a large angle, and so the meteors will trace long streaks across the sky.

However you prepare, make sure to mark the night of the twelfth in your calendar, because the Perseid meteor shower will feature fireballs, those bright and long-lasting meteors, an experience well worth having.

 

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HAVE KIDS CURIOUS ABOUT GOING TO SEE METEORS ON THEIR OWN ONE DAY?

Meteor Fireballs Await You In the Perseid Meteor Shower

Stargazing 101: Virgo the Maiden - http://clapway.com/2015/07/17/stargazing-101-virgo-the-maiden987/

My mother was a Virgo, so, of course, this was her favorite constellation story to tell us. This set of stars has many stellar objects that can be found in the cluster.

The Mythology behind the constellation

The cluster of stars known as Virgo the Maiden is an homage to Demeter, goddess of harvest and fertility. She controlled all the crops in the world and was very generous to often give the people a healthy harvest. Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, was out in a beautiful field one day gathering flowers that her mother had grown for her. Hades spotted her and a lust burned inside him so strong that he kidnapped her, fearing that he wouldn’t be able to live without her. He took her down into the underworld and planned to make her his bride. Demeter was devastated and retaliated by refusing to fertilize any crops. The land grew barren and dusty, and Zeus knew he would have to do something in order to help the farmers. He called upon the help of a goddess named Hecate, to figure out a way alleviate the situation. Hecate declared that if Persephone had not eaten anything while in the underworld that she must be returned to Demeter. Unfortunately, she had eaten pomegranate seeds while in the realm of the dead, and therefore could not be returned. Demeter persisted with her strike and begged Zeus to help her. Finally giving in to Demeter’s pleas, Zeus ordered that for three months out of the year, Persephone was to live with Hades in the underworld, and would spend the remaining nine months with her mother. Every 9 months, when Persephone leaves her home to spend her time with Hades, the world grows cold and unfruitful, a time also known as Winter, and when she returns, so does the fertile soil and the birth of new crops. Virgo the Maiden appears in the spring as is said to signify the return of Persephone to her mother.

The Facts

“Virgo” is Latin for “virgin,” however; Demeter is represented in this way as a more nurturing, mother figure. You can observe quite a few different objects in the Virgo constellation, such as the Virgo Cluster, a supermassive black hole (also known as NGC 5813), and Abell 1689 (a massive cluster of galaxies.) My favorite object in the Virgo cluster is the Sombrero galaxy, which is 28 million light years from Earth.

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Stargazing 101: Virgo the Maiden