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10-26-2004, 04:20 AM
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#1 (permalink) |
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I change
Location: USA
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Prime-time eclipse is expected Wednesday
Best viewing is on the East Coast.
And it does seem thye weather will permit: ........................................... Posted on Tue, Oct. 26, 2004 Prime-time eclipse is expected Wednesday Nature invites you to a spectacular free show this week. Just go outside Wednesday night, look up and watch the lunar eclipse. A stunning and accessible source of celestial wonder materializes this week, right in your backyard. Astronomers say a total eclipse will darken the moon Wednesday night. The prime-time sky show will be visible . . . everywhere. ''This is one of the few phenomena that people in the city can see, even with bright city lights,'' said Jack Horkheimer, executive planetarium director at the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium. ``You don't even need binoculars or a telescope.'' The spectacle -- the last total lunar eclipse visible in South Florida until March 2007 -- begins at 9:14 p.m. and ends at 12:54 a.m. Thursday. If the clouds stay away, as forecasters anticipate, totality arrives at 10:23 p.m., with the moon likely to turn, appropriately enough for this time of year, pumpkin orange-red. Which brings us to the first of three main questions: What's with that color? The autumnal tint is produced by blocked sunlight that is bent by the Earth's atmosphere. The exact shade cannot be predicted, as it depends on several factors, including the concentration and composition of dust in the atmosphere. So, what exactly is a lunar eclipse? It occurs when the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon. As you watch the shadow move across the moon, keep this in mind: It's actually racing along the surface at three times the speed of sound. And why exactly should we care about this? ''Years ago, people used to say lunar eclipses have no scientific value. Intrinsically, they don't,'' Horkheimer said. ``But extrinsically, they do have value because they pique the curiousity of young people. ``Eclipses are what turned me on to astronomy when I was a child in Randolph, Wis. My grandfather would take me out to look at the stars. ``When a parent takes a kid outside and they spend the night looking up at an eclipse and discussing it, who knows? Maybe one out of 1,000 kids are so turned on that they become the great astronomers of our society. ``So, if you want to understand the basic wonder of celestial bodies, well, here you go.'' ...................... Lunar eclipses put us in our rightful place in the cosmos by offering a visual perspective on our relationship to the entities that dominate our skies. Catch it if you can...
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create evolution |
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10-26-2004, 04:27 AM
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#2 (permalink) |
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Submit to me, you know you want to
Location: Lilburn, Ga
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Thanks for the reminder ART!!!
Im hoping to get some good pictures....if I can stay awake until totality time 
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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!! |
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10-26-2004, 04:50 AM
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#3 (permalink) |
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Junkie
Moderator Emeritus
Location: Chicago
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and Titan, Saturn's moon comes into focus today... round about noon...
Saturn's moon Titan, comes into focus today Saturn's moon Titan comes into focus today By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY Saturn's mysterious moon Titan does a star turn today, getting a close-up from the international Cassini-Huygens space probe. Larger than Mercury and Pluto, Titan is a full-fledged world in its own right, complete with a thick atmosphere and the largest expanse of unmapped surface geography in the solar system. At 12:44 p.m. ET, the probe will pass within 746 miles of the haze-shrouded moon's surface, snapping the closest-ever images of one side of Titan. "I'm expecting to be pleasantly bewildered," says Torrence Johnson, an imaging scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Because today's flyby comes about 280 times closer to Titan than the probe did during a flyby in July, scientists hope for images that will answer questions, old and new, about the orange world. NASA, which manages the $3.27 billion mission with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Italy's space agency (ASI), plans to release the first images from the flyby tonight. "Titan is one of the most fascinating places in the whole solar system," says astronomer Antonin Bouchez of Hawaii's W.M. Keck Observatory, who is not a Cassini team member. "It is a completely alien place, but it may be the most Earth-like world we know, with beaches, lakes and oceans. That's what makes it interesting." Researchers hope that with today's flyby they'll learn more about unexpected observations made during July's pass. • White "ice" plains turned out to be mixtures of naturally occurring tar and ice, and dark "tar" plains turned out to be just ice. • Jagged lines between plains suggest that clashing ridges, and even earthquakes, might plague Titan. • A dearth of craters suggests that unexpected resurfacing takes place on the frozen moon. "We'll probably see plains of tar with frozen continents of ice sticking out above them," Bouchez says. "But the truth is that nobody knows for sure." The flyby should reveal whether a landscape of rugged, frozen features eroded by lakes and rivers of frozen oils and tar is hidden beneath Titan's orange methane clouds, says mission scientist Toby Owen of the University of Hawaii-Manoa. It's also possible that liquid hydrocarbons flowing over Titan's minus-290-degree surface might have smoothed the moon to resemble "a frozen chocolate sundae," Owen says. "We're going to find out what's down there over the next two days." Like a time capsule from the earliest days of the solar system's 4.5-billion-year history, Titan's frozen state could give scientists insight into Earth's early surface if the moon's organic chemicals match those present on Earth before the development of life. Titan is "a flammable world," Owen says, covered in liquid and frozen hydrocarbons and sheathed in a natural-gas haze. Because whatever oxygen the moon possesses is frozen in ice, no spark can ignite the powder keg. "We're not expecting any life on Titan. It's much too cold," Owen says. "We are going back to the earliest days on Earth." The flyby also will observe the region where the ESA's Huygens probe should make its parachute landing onto Titan in January. Radar and photo images from today's flyby should resolve features down to football-stadium size and help predict whether the 705-pound probe will survive its landing. Some of the probe's instruments, including a panoramic camera, can operate for 30 minutes after arriving on a solid surface. Cassini is on a four-year mission to explore Saturn and its many moons (more than 30 and still counting) that started with its arrival at the planet in July. It will fly by Titan 44 more times, mapping the moon even as it uses the moon's gravity to adjust its orbit and explore the Saturnian system. Measurements of Titan's atmospheric thickness taken during today's maneuver also will help navigators adjust subsequent flybys, some passing as low as 590 miles in altitude, and the landing trajectory of the Huygens probe next year.
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Last edited by maleficent; 10-26-2004 at 06:16 AM.. |
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10-27-2004, 04:21 AM
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#9 (permalink) |
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Americow, the Beautiful
Location: Washington, D.C.
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This is one of the few times at my school when you can see all of the people who congregate on the steps of our library all doing the same thing together - they lie on their backs and watch the sky. The last time we did that was during the meteor shower a couple years ago. I hope the clouds go away and give us another chance tonight.
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"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." (Michael Jordan) |
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| eclipse, expected, primetime, wednesday |
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i was all excited... but its supposed to be cloudy tomorow night...
