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The sky at night (meteors, Iridium flares, the moon)


Colin
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^ That DK is prime puffin or " noarrie " viewing country up there, yes that was a moon to remember.

Yes, too light skies now until maybe the middle of August, overall despite the predictions it's been a fairly disappointing aurora season.

Prime puffin country :-

http://i1207.photobucket.com/albums/bb479/beenister/IMG_2841sdsmbmoon_zpsd6477b09.jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...

Supermoon tonight.

 

http://earthsky.org/tonight/is-biggest-and-closest-full-moon-on-june-23-2013-a-supermoon

 

 

"This full moon is not only the closest and largest full moon of the year. It also presents the moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2013. The moon will not be so close again until August, 2014. In other words, it’s not just a supermoon. It’s the closest supermoon of 2013.

 

We astronomers call this sort of close full moon a perigee full moon. The word perigee describes the moon’s closest point to Earth for a given month."

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"August 10-13, 2013 before dawn, the Perseids

 

The Perseid meteor shower is perhaps the most beloved meteor shower of the year for the Northern Hemisphere.

The shower builds gradually to a peak, often produces 50 to 100 meteors per hour in a dark sky at the peak, and, for us in the Northern Hemisphere, this shower comes when the weather is warm.

The Perseids tend to strengthen in number as late night deepens into midnight, and typically produce the most meteors in the wee hours before dawn."

 

http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/earthskys-meteor-shower-guide

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Sup ISON?

Corona not hot enough for ya?

 

 

 
"28/11/13 - Last night I was optimistic that comet ISON would continue its dramatic brightening trend, and soar into the negative magnitudes. This morning it is indeed with a heavy heart that I show you the image opposite, in which we clearly see that ISON has faded rather dramatically in the past few hours. It is still likely around -1 magnitude, but this number is falling fast. 

The question on everyone's lips is "will it survive perihelion?", and now I'm reluctantly thinking it seems very unlikely to survive at this point. I do think it will reach perihelion, , I will be very surprised to see something of any consequence come out the other side."

____________

 

"29/11/13 - we're up to our necks in media inquiries and attempting to do real science to figure out the mystery that is comet ISON.

After impressing us yesterday, comet ISON faded dramatically overnight, and left us with a comet with no apparent nucleus in the SOHO/LASCO C2 images. As the comet plunged through the solar atmosphere, and failed to put on a show in the SDO images, we understandably concluded that ISON had succumbed to its passage and died a fiery death. Except it didn't.

After perihelion, a very faint smudge of dust appeared in the the LASCO C2 images along ISON's orbit. This surprised us a little...

Now, in the latest LASCO C3 images, we are seeing something beginning to gradually brighten up again. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that there's a comet in the images!

As ISON plunged through the corona, it continued to fall apart and vaporize, and lost its coma and tail completely just like Lovejoy did in 2011. Then, what emerged from the Sun was a small but perhaps somewhat coherent nucleus, that has resumed emitting dust and gas. In essence, the tail is growing back, as Lovejoy's did.

We have a whole new set of unknowns, and this ridiculous, crazy, dynamic and unpredictable object continues to amaze, astound and confuse us to no end. 

It has risen from the solar corona and  shines once more."

 

Here's a hint for the NASA boys pulling their hair out...

 

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