According to an email from one of the profs at Cowley College, we are in for a meteor showers the next couple of nights, and a lunar eclipse is coming soon. So some cool stuff happening in the night sky.. Just thought i would pass this along.
The Geminids are coming!!
The Geminid meteor shower is expected to peak early Tuesday morning. You will be able to see them after the sun goes down this evening by finding a dark location and looking toward the eastern sky. Activity should start picking up around 8:00 – 9:00pm with the best viewing being after 2:00am tomorrow morning when the radiant, where the meteors appear to originate in the sky, is high above the horizon. The Geminids are pieces of debris that come from asteroid 3200 Phaethon which was discovered in 1983. Peak rates of 40+ meteors per hour are expected.
Weather permitting, we should also be able to see a total eclipse of the moon on December 21. The earth casts a shadow behind itself in space just as a shadow is cast behind you when facing the sun. When the alignment is just right and the moon enters this shadow, we experience a lunar eclipse. At approximately 12:55pm on the 21st the eastern edge of the moon will start to enter the shadow of earth. As the moon continues in its orbit, more and more of it will disappear until it is entirely eclipsed at approximately 1:55am.
The moon will begin to exit the shadow of earth at approximately 3:15am, and the entire moon will be visible by 4:20am. Total lunar eclipses are not rare, but they don’t happen every year either. The last lunar eclipse was two years ago and the next won’t be for another two years. No special equipment is needed and this is a good astronomical event to take pictures of.
Happy Skies!!
Todd Shepherd
Social Science Department Chair
Cowley College
Off Topic, sorry. But, I can't resist. Remember the "crash tax" ACPD tried a year or so ago? Well, check out what New York Fire Dept. is trying. Hope you don't need a Fire callout if you live in NY. ($400) Question: Is this where we're headed in this country?
ReplyDeletehttp://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/12/new-york-drivers-bracing-for-crash-tax/1?csp=34
House of Representatives
ReplyDeleteGallup Poll Puts Congressional Approval at Lowest in History
Published December 15, 2010
| FoxNews.com
More than eight in 10 people think Congress stinks.
According to the latest Gallup Poll out Wednesday, 83 percent polled over the weekend said they disapprove of Congress' performance. The 13 percent who do approve makes for the lowest approval rating ever.
The Dec. 10-12 poll of 1,019 adults had a 4-point margin of error, so even if the poll were off by 4 percent, Congress' high would only reach 17 percent approval.
Granted Gallup has been tracking approval ratings for Congress for only 30 years, but the 13 percent who approve of Congress' actions doesn't bode well for the newly elected House Republican majority.
It will start the next term coming off a lame duck session in which Republicans agreed to support more than $300 billion in new spending as part of a tax deal with President Obama and allowed $8 billion in earmarks to creep into a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that emerged after Democrats didn't bother to create a budget blueprint for the fiscal year.
(Maybe they covered that $400.00 in that 1924 page 1.1 trillion dollar omnibus bill? But I doubt it!)