None of these occur on your schedule or my schedule. They occur on their own schedule, on a cosmic schedule. It is up to us to make ourselves available to witness them, to be at the right place at the right time, so to speak.
You don’t necessarily need a pile of high-priced equipment to seize the cosmic moment. In fact, some of these spectacles are best viewed with the naked eye. A selection of my favorites are listed below. Pencil a few into your datebook, won’t you?
1) Total Lunar Eclipses. Lunar eclipses occur only at Full Moon. When the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned such that the Sun casts Earth’s shadow on the Full Moon, we experience a lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse may be partial or total, depending upon the alignment of the three bodies. When all three line up so that the Moon is entirely within Earth’s shadow, it's called a total lunar eclipse, and the Moon turns red. Really! It’s a phenomenon that’s even visible in the city, and you won’t soon forget the eerie sight.
The next total lunar eclipse will occur on December 21, 2010. Totality begins at 12:40 a.m. Mountain Time (adjust for your time zone) and ends at 1:53 a.m. Mountain Time. It will be visible throughout North America.
You can practice with a partial lunar eclipse on June 26, 2010. This one’s pretty well placed for the continental U.S., with the exception of the East Coast. You’ll need to get up in the wee hours on the 26th and watch the Moon setting, just prior to sunrise. This is when you’ll see a portion of the Moon in shadow— at greatest eclipse, about 50 percent.
2) Meteor Showers. Comets leave behind clouds of debris when their orbits take them near the Sun. Subsequently, when Earth, on its orbit around the Sun, plows through one of these debris clouds, we experience a meteor shower.
The Perseids (PURR-see-yidds) are a reliable shower active from mid-July through the end of August. This year, they peak on the morning of August 12, 2010. The peak date, as well as a day before and a day after, are all good times to plan to view them. You’ll need to watch for them between midnight and dawn. This year should be optimum viewing, as the waxing crescent Moon will set before midnight and therefore won’t wash out the sky.
You won’t see many “shooting stars” in the city, so find yourself a dark site away from urban light pollution. A meteor shower is Mother Nature’s fireworks show. Don’t miss out.
3) Planetary Alignments. Because the planets all travel at different speeds around the Sun, they periodically catch up to one another. From our vantage point on Earth, the naked-eye planets can sometimes appear to be close to one another in the sky, as they pass. In addition, they may happen to be nicely placed near a crescent Moon, since the Moon is always changing position in our sky over the course of a month.
These picturesque groupings are called alignments, and the combination of bright objects makes an easy observing target even for city dwellers. Here are some nice upcoming alignments to watch for:
Looking west after sunset on July 31
Star maps created with Your Sky
On July 31, about a half hour after sunset, look west for a trio of bunched-up planets: Venus (the brightest), Mars (reddish-colored), and Saturn (golden-colored). Mercury is there too, but hanging low over the western horizon, so it will be a challenge.
Looking west after sunset on August 13
On August 13, about a half hour after sunset, look west for the aforementioned trio with the crescent Moon now joining them.
4) Milky Way. You might call this one the “main event,” as the Milky Way is our home galaxy. How wicked cool is it that we can look up at the night sky any time of the year and see an edge-on view of the spiral arms of our platter-shaped galaxy? Well, that is, if we get away from city lights. Unfortunately, 20 percent of the world’s population can’t see the Milky Way from where they live, due to light pollution.
Naked eye, we see what looks like a long filmy cloud stretching across the sky, but we know it’s composed of billions of distant stars. Yes, billions! If you haven’t experienced it, get yourself out to the country immediately if not sooner, and look up. You won’t be sorry.
