November full moon plays hide and see

While politicians are busy making last minute pitches on US Election Day Nov. 8, 2022 to influence the course of history, our astrological world is busy following its own course.

November’s full moon, called the Beaver Moon because that creature is about ready to shelter in the lodge it created and stored with food for the winter, will appear full and bright the night of Nov. 7. But, it reaches full bright illumination early the following morning at 6:02 a.m. EST Nov. 8 and will still look full Nov. 9. 

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It is not a Halloween trick or an alien ship

Meteor shower (Photo courtesy of NASA)
Meteor shower (Photo courtesy of NASA)

You don’t have to call a government agency or a news station if you see a fireball overhead. It’s not a trick. It’s a treat. The Taurid meteors are charging across the sky. 

However, you might want to notify the American Meteor Society because that organization does keep track of fireball sightings and does want to hear about them.

Indeed, a sighting is likely in 2022 because AMS says the Taurids last great meteor production was in 2015. Taurids’ history has shown that its abundant output tends to happen every seven years. 

BTW, other years it’s not so great. So, the time span might be why you hadn’t heard about the Taurids before.

The meteors seem to emanate from constellation Taurus the Bull (its radiant) in two streams, the North and South Taurids. In 2022, South peaks Nov. 4-5 with North peaking Nov. 11-13. Taurus the Bull is near the constellation Orion. 

A better watching is arguably period now through Halloween and Day of the Dead. The moon cycle reaches its full stage Nov. 8 so its growing illumination period may make it harder to catch a fireball on Nov. 5.  But fireballs, like their name, are bright, so maybe try the peak date.

The Taurids already started Sept. 10 and continue through Nov. 20, 2022. As with most other meteor events, they happen when Earth passes through a stream of cometary debris. With the Taurids that is what Comet 2P-Encke, the parent comet, leaves behind, according to NASA.

NASA notes that unlike many comets, 2P-Encke is not named for its discoverer, Pierre F. A. Mechain, but for Johann Franz Encke who calculated its orbit. The letter P means it is a periodic comet.

Whatever dates you venture out to see a Taurid meteor, the best time is after midnight when the radiant is high. But dress warmly and be prepared to wait. Best watching technique is to scan the skies instead of focusing on the Taurus radiant. 

For more information visit Earth/Sky/ Taurids and Space/Taurid meteor shower.

 

 

Sky show this week

Meteor shower (Photo courtesy of NASA)
Meteor shower (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Look up after midnight to watch what is among the year’s best meteor shower.

Those meteors zooming across the sky at about 41 miles per second are the Orionids. Although they started the end of September and go through mid-November the best time to “catch a falling star” as the song goes, is during the shower’s peak of Oct. 21 when you may see between 10 to 20 meteors per hour.

Fortunately, the moon will be merely a slim wanning crescent during the peak date so moonlight won’t be a factor to see the sky show. Because the Orionids often leave bright trains and show-off as bright fireballs, sky watchers are likely to be rewarded with a meteor or two. 

Where they seem to come from is called the Radiant so with a name like Orionids, expect to look towards the Club of the Orion the Hunter constellation. Look north of Orion’s bright Betelgeuse star.

The Parent (origination) of the Orionids is 1P/Halley. Right, the comet. These meteors are comet debris. Dust of Halley’s Comet produce the Eta Aquarids in May, usually best seen in the southern hemisphere, and the Orionids which are better, brighter and can be seen in both hemispheres in mid-October. 

Note: Dress warmly and be patient. The meteor show goes from midnight until dawn.

For more info visit EarthSkyTime and Date and NASA Exploration

 

 

Hunter Moon appears large and bright for several nights

Fall full moon (J Jacobs photo)
Fall full moon (J Jacobs photo)

Don’t be surprised to find a large, bright orb peering into your windows this weekend.

October 2022’s full moon is technically Oct. 9 with full illumination at 4:54  p.m. ET. but it will look full Oct. 8- Oct. 11 due to it’s orbit in relation to the Sun and Earth.

 It will also look larger and more luminous than some of the year’s other full moons because it will appear at sunset when the sky is glowing

What’s in a name?

The Old Farmer’s Almanac explains that unlike folklore and native American names for full moons, The Harvest Moon and Hunter Moon are related to the autumn equinox.

 The Harvest Moon was the full moon closest to the fall equinox on Sept. 22 and so the October full moon is the Hunter Moon because that is the name of the moon that follows the Harvest Moon.

EarthSky  an excellent, on-line source of moon and planetary information, points out that the Harvest and Hunter moons relate to the season when autumn starts because of the moon’s orbital path at that time. That means that in the Northern Hemisphere the moon will appear bright in the east just as the sun is setting in the west for several nights.

 

 

  

Harvest Moon is on the horizon

September's full moon is the Harvest and Corn Moon. (J Jacobs photo)
September’s full moon is the Harvest and Corn Moon. (J Jacobs photo)

As you begin to see more fresh corn in farmers markets and grocery stores and more leaves dotting the grass and walkways, you know our food is entering the harvest season. So, no surprise that the September full moon is called the Full Harvest Moon and the Corn Moon.

Actually, Harvest Moon is the designated name according to when the full moon is closer to the Fall Equinox. In 2022, that applies to the September full moon because the Autumnal or Fall Equinox is Sept. 22.  Visit Autumnal Equinox at the Old Farmer’s Almanac for this designation of when fall begins. (Meteorologists like to say Sept. 1 is the first day of fall.)

Start watching the moon grow fuller and brighter this first full week of September. In 2022, the moon will begin to appear full Sept. 8 and really seem full blown Sept. 9, but it will reach its full stage early in the morning of Sept. 10. 

BTW, next month’s full moon is Oct. 9, a few days more than September’s past the Fall Equinox. It will be the Hunter Moon. 

Maybe you’ll notice that the Harvest Moon is particularly good for bringing in crops. Nearing fall, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each evening. But that changes in September for areas in the mid-northern latitudes where moon rising is only 20 minutes later due to a shallower eclipse angle of Earth to Sun. 

It is not a Supermoon but unlike other months’ full moons, the Harvest  Moon rises around sunset for several evenings. That early rising frequency and lengthy moon lit twilights allow farmers more time to do their harvesting before the nights turn really frosty.

In addition, the moon will look totally full through Sept. 11.  For more Harvest Moon info visit Farmer’s Almanac. For more full moon names visit Time and Date. For good, basic Earth to Sun angles visit Earth/Sky and ecliptic

 

 

 

Meteors and Supermoon compete for attention

 

Meteor shower (Photo courtesy of NASA)
Meteor shower (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Circle Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022 on the calendar or make a note on the smart phone for a double sky phenomenon. But one sky event may make it hard to see the other.

The Perseids, arguably the best meteor shower of the year, already started July 17 but continues through Aug. 24. It peaks Aug. 12-13 with from 50 to 100 meteors zooming across the sky per hour.

The meteors are debris from parent comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle whose radiant is the Perseus constellation in the northeastern sky. The greatest number of meteors will be visible after the radiant rises, according to Earth SkyThe radiant rises around 11 p.m. CT, nearly due northeast in Perseus so the Perseids are best viewed from midnight to sunrise. 

Perseus was the Greek mythological hero who stopped (beheaded) Medusa the Gorgon (Maybe you’ve seen the TV ad where Medusa enters a bar and turns guys to stone).

The problem: August’s full moon, glowing in the sky Aug. 11-13 is the fourth and last supermoon of 2022. As a supermoon whose orbit brings it closer to earth than most moons come the rest of the year, it looks larger and brighter than usual. That large illumination makes it harder to spot meteors.

July's full moon was a supermoon because its orbit brought it so close to Earth. (J Jacobs photo)
July’s full moon was a supermoon because its orbit brought it so close to Earth. (J Jacobs photo)

“Sadly, this year’s Perseids peak will see the worst possible circumstances for spotters,” said NASA astronomer Bill Cooke, who leads the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

“Most of us in North America would normally see 50 or 60 meteors per hour,” he said, “but this year, during the normal peak, the full Moon will reduce that to 10-20 per hour at best,” said Cooke.

Aptly named, at least for 2022’s August Supermoon, this full moon is called the Sturgeon Moon after the giant fish found in the Great Lakes that is often caught the last month of summer.  A good source for full moon names is The Old Farmer’s Almanac. The sturgeon is considered a “living fossil” for its beginnings about 136 million years ago.

(For information on when to watch for the Perseids in your area visit Time and Date.)

 

Meteors overhead

Meteor shower (Photo courtesy of NASA)
Meteor shower (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Word of meteor sightings in the middle of July have been coming into news bureaus but little has been said about the timing. Astronomers know there is usually meteor activity going on over head.

However, the meteor showers that catch attention are typically the big ones with major peak times such as the Perseids that peak Aug. 11-12 in 2022.

Peak dates don’t mean those meteor showers haven’t already started.

Currently the Delta Aquarids which are a montage of meteors seeming to radiate below the “square” of Pegasus, started about July 18 and go through early August. They can produce up to 20 meteors per hour.

Their best sighting is from mid-evening to dawn in the Southern Hemisphere and the southern part of the United States during the new moon phase July 28. That is when moonlight won’t be a factor because the moon is between Earth and the Sun.

In addition, the Perseids have also started. Brighter than the Delta Aquarids, they can be seen now because the comet of origin, 109P/Swift-Tuttle, passes through Earth’s orbit July 14 to Aug. 24. Their peak will be during August’s full moon phase Aug. 12 but is expected to deliver about 100 meteors per hour.

So, just because a meteor shower is said to peak at a certain time during the month, does not mean its meteors aren’t zooming overhead before and after those dates.

EarthSky has a good analysis of these two July-August meteor showers.

 

July has largest looking full moon of the year

July full moon is a supermoon because it is so close to Earth. (J Jacobs photo)
July full moon is a supermoon because it is so close to Earth. (J Jacobs photo)

If up and about the night of July 13, 2022 you likely had a bright light shining into you abode. It is best “supermoon” of 2022. But if the weather was bad, don’t worry. It still looks large and bright through Friday morning even though its full phase and peak illumination was July 13 at 2:38 p.m. EDT.

This July full moon appears larger than normal because its orbit brings it close to planet Earth. NASA’s Full Moon guide xxplains that astrologer Richard Nolle used the term “supermoon” in 1979 for a new or full moon within 90 Percent of perigee as its closest approach to Earth.

In other words, a supermoon looks larger but isn’t.

Full moons have been given names by Native Americans, Europeans and other groups usually according to nature, rituals, farm life and animal behavior.  July’s full moon is often known as the “Buck” full moon.

A good place to get more name infomation is the Old Farmer’s Almanac. It has a video that also talks about what has been left on the moon.

 

 

Tau Herculids meteor shower

 

Meteor shower Photo courtesy of NASA)
Meteor shower (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Back in the beginning of May we mentioned two meteor showers for the month: the Eta Aquarida early in May and the Tau Herculids at the end of May.

What was unknown and only a guess was how large the Tau Herculids shower would be. It wasn’t on everyone’s radar as one to watch or even  existing.

However, EarthSky suggested it could be an exciting display because it was the debris from parent comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, (SW3) which had been breaking up and would likely be seen in the Earth’s Western Hemisphere at night

Though the debris was, as predicted, not bright, and didn’t fill the sky with hundreds of meteors at a time, the Tau Herculids did put on a reasonable display with as many as 25 to 35 meteors seen around midnight CT May 30 p.m. to May 31 a.m.

Noticed by astronomers in 1930, it is now on more sky watch lists. A good site to see reports of the meteor shower is at EarthSky.

A very different full moon transforms the May sky

Lunar and solar eclipse (Photo courtesy of NASA)
Lunar and solar eclipse (Photo courtesy of NASA)

You won’t need special eye gear to watch an eclipse when Sunday, May 15, 2022 becomes Monday, May 16.

If following the names of full moons each month, you know they reflect the season and nature whether in Native Indian, European or religious context. So, you won’t be surprised that May’s full moon is also called the Flower Moon. Other names of the May full moon are Corn Moon and Milk Moon.

But, the full moon for May 2022 is also called the Blood Moon.

Watch the May Moon start out as a large, silvery somewhat yellowish (depending on where you are and your atmosphere), full-sized globe when it appears on your horizon.

It will seem larger than usual even though it hasn’t changed shape. The full moon is close to being a Supermoon because its orbit brings it so close to earth.

Keep watching to experience a lunar eclipse.

As it rises, it will move into Earth’s shadow. Remember at the height of a full eclipse you’ll have the Sun, Earth and Moon in a direct line.

It starts out in the penumbral, somewhat less noticeable phase, because the full May Moon is in the lighter part of the Earth’s shadow. It moves into our planet’s partial shadow at 9:32 p.m. EDT.

Watch as it looks as if a bite is being taken out of the Moon as it is in partial eclipse stage. The Moon will then move into the Earth’s full shadow for more than an hour: 11:29 p.m. on Sunday night until 12:54 a.m. Monday morning. The eclipse reaches its peak at 12:11 a.m. At the back end, the partial eclipse ends at May 16 at 1:55 a.m. EDT.

Its reddish, brownish color happens as the Earth’s atmosphere refracts some light from the sunrise and sunset conditions around our planet.

To find the sunrise and sunset times in your area visit the  Old Farmer’s Almanac which has a site calculator. Your time zone matters if watching the eclipse.

Another watch choice is at Time and Date which has a YouTube live stream connection.

For more May Moon information visit NASA . For the area covered by the eclipse see EarthSky. For information on how the lunar eclipse fits with April’s recent  partial solar eclipse visit Space.