Coming Days Bring Lunar Eclipse, Meteor Shower
Contact: Rebecca Johnson
Editor, StarDate magazine
512-475-6763; rjohnson@stardate.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 9, 2011
Both a lunar eclipse and a meteor shower will light up the skies in the coming days, according to the editors of StarDate magazine.
The lunar eclipse takes place early Saturday morning, December 10. Most of the United States will see a partial eclipse before the Moon sets around sunrise, with those in the west seeing a deeper eclipse that those in the east. The entire eclipse will be visible from Alaska and Hawaii (as well as Asia, Australia, and the eastern Pacific).
A total lunar eclipse occurred the morning of December 10, 2011.The eclipse begins when the Moon enters the faint outer portion of Earth's shadow, the penumbra. Most skywatchers won't notice anything, though, until the Moon enters the darker inner shadow, the umbra, at 6:46 a.m. CST. The shadow will take a bigger "bite" out of the lunar disk as eclipse progresses. By 8:06 a.m. CST, the Moon will be completely immersed in the shadow. This phase, known as totality, will last about 51 minutes. The total eclipse will end at 8:57 a.m. CST, and the partial eclipse will end at 10 a.m. CST.
This year's best views of the Geminid meteor shower will be after dark on Tuesday night, December 13, all the way until the pre-dawn hours of the Wednesday, December 14. The Moon will be just past full, and will wash out the fainter meteors.
Geminid meteors appear to fall from near the star Castor, one of the “heads” of the constellation Gemini, the twins. The meteors are not related to Castor. They are debris from an asteroid called Phaethon. The shower recurs each year when Earth passes through this debris strung along Phaethon’s orbit around the Sun.
The Geminid shower was the first to be linked to an asteroid. Most meteor showers occur when Earth crosses the orbit of a comet. Though the Geminid shower was discovered in the 1860s, it was in 1983 that astronomers identified Phaethon as the shower’s source.
For your best view of the Geminid meteors, get away from city lights. Look for state or city parks or other safe, dark sites. Lie on a blanket or reclining chair to get a full-sky view. If you can see all of the stars in the Little Dipper, you have good dark-adapted vision.
Published bi-monthly by The University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory, StarDate magazine provides readers with skywatching tips, skymaps, beautiful astronomical photos, astronomy news and features, and a 32-page Sky Almanac each January.
Established in 1932, the McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Texas, hosts multiple telescopes undertaking a wide range of astronomical research under the darkest night skies of any professional observatory in the continental United States. McDonald is home to the consortium-run Hobby-Eberly Telescope, one of the world's largest, which will soon be upgraded to begin the HET Dark Energy Experiment. An internationally known leader in astronomy education and outreach, McDonald Observatory is also pioneering the next generation of astronomical research as a founding partner of the Giant Magellan Telescope.
