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Twin meteor showers to send fireballs streaking through November sky
Both the Northern Taurid and Southern Taurid meteor showers peak during the first half of November, and each event will carry the possibility of unleashing dazzling fireballs across the nighttime sky.

November is one of the better months to view meteor activity from the Northern Hemisphere, the American Meteor Society (AMS) said. "While no major activity is expected this month, the two Taurid radiants plus the Leonids keep the skies active."

The Southern Taurids are the first of the two showers to peak, reaching maximum activity Thursday, Nov. 4, into the early hours of Friday, Nov. 5, according to the AMS. This is followed up by the Northern Taurids one week later on the night of Thursday, Nov. 11, into Friday, Nov. 12.

A six-hour-long partial lunar eclipse—the longest lunar eclipse to occur within a span of 1,000 years—aligns with the full moon tonight into the early morning hours tomorrow. The last time a lengthy lunar eclipse took place was February 18, 1440, and the next longest lunar eclipse will not appear until February 8, 2669, reports Graham Jones for Time and Date.

Also known as a Frosty Moon or Beaver Moon, November’s full moon signals the beginning of the winter season. It is dubbed the Beaver Moon because traditionally, Native American hunters set traps for beavers during this time in the year to harvest their fur in preparation for winter, reports Passant Rabie for Inverse.

Total lunar eclipses happen when the Earth passes between the sun and the moon. Partial lunar eclipses occur when the Earth, sun, and moon are quite not lined up perfectly, so Earth’s shadow will only partly cover its natural satellite.

While technically only a partial eclipse, 97 percent of the moon will be covered by Earth’s shadow during the phenomenon’s peak. A tiny sliver of the moon will glow while the rest of it will appear a dim reddish-brown color characteristic of a lunar eclipse.

This eclipse’s duration is longer because the moon is near apogee, or at its furthest distance from the Earth, George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo. The entire event will last about six hours from the moment the moon first enters Earth's shadow until it leaves.

The eclipse's peak will occur at 4:02 a.m. ET on Friday, November 19 and last for three hours and 28 minutes, the longest partial lunar eclipse of the century, Inverse reports. In comparison, the longest total eclipse of the century occurred on July 27, 2018, which lasted for 1 hour and 42 minutes, reports Michelle Robertson for SFGate.

Estiveo wrote: ↑Thu Dec 09, 2021 10:06 am

(CNN)The new year kicks off with the Quadrantid meteor shower, which is expected to peak in the overnight hours from Sunday to Monday.

The Quadrantids are typically among the strongest meteor showers of the year. Fortunately, a waxing crescent moon phase will practically render the moon invisible overnight, allowing for peak visibility of the meteors.

Still, the shower is notoriously hard to observe due to January's difficult weather and its short peak of only about six hours. It will be best seen in the Northern Hemisphere between the late-night hours Sunday and dawn on Monday, according to the American Meteor Society.

NASA posted on its Meteor Watch Facebook page Sunday saying that a lightning mapper on a satellite picked up a strong meteor signature around the same time. A nearby infrasound station registered the blast wave as the meteor broke apart, and from the data, NASA estimates the blast had the energy of 30 tons of TNT.

NASA said the object’s size was about a yard in diameter with a mass close to half a ton. If it hadn’t been cloudy, NASA said a fireball would have been easily visible, about 100 times brighter than the full moon.

An astronomer at the Vatican Observatory (www.VaticanObservatory.org), together with his colleagues, has found a new member of the solar system orbiting beyond the planet Neptune. This “trans-Neptunian object,” or “TNO,” is currently is designated “2021 XD7.” It was first observed by Fr. Richard Boyle, S.J. on December 3, 2021, using the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) on Mt. Graham in Arizona (USA).

Lithuanian astronomer and astrophysicist Kazimieras Černis analyzed the data from the VATT for the discovery. Peter Veres of the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center calculated the object’s orbit using observations Boyle acquired over time.



The first TNO, Pluto (originally classified as a planet but now considered a dwarf planet), was discovered in 1930. Like Pluto, TNO 2021 XD7 has an eccentric orbit that is significantly tilted with respect to the orbits of Earth and the solar system’s other planets. That orbit brings the object no closer to the sun than the distance of Neptune (which is 30 times the Earth’s distance from the sun) yet carries it more than twice that far out from the sun. 2021 XD7 takes roughly three centuries to complete one orbit around the sun. Because of its great distance, little is currently known about the object, but it is certainly much smaller even than Pluto, which itself is but a fraction of the size of Earth’s moon.

The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, also known as the Alice P. Lennon Telescope, was built in the 1990s under Pope St. John Paul II. The Vatican Observatory’s older telescopes, located at Castel Gandolfo, had become less useful for astronomical research, owing to light pollution from Rome.

jcolvin2 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 22, 2022 2:37 am Every time an exoplanet is discovered, an angel gets his singing wine glasses.