John Homenuk

Viewing conditions in question for tonights supermoon eclipse

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Beginning at 8:00pm tonight, the Earth will pass directly between the sun and the moon, in what is also known as a lunar eclipse. The suns light will cast an orange/red shadow on the moon as it fragments around the Earth.

To make the eclipse even more memorable, the moon will be in what is known as “perigee” or a “supermoon”, which means it is at its closest point to the Earth this year in its orbit. This will make the moon appear 14 percent larger than it usually does, obviously making the eclipse even more outstanding than usual.

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John Homenuk

Supermoon eclipse: What you need to know

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A supermoon lunar eclipse. That’ll get most meteorology or astronomy hobbyists excited. In all seriousness, a lunar eclipse can be one of the more exciting celestial events. It has been a while since our area has had the pleasure of viewing one, so this Sunday’s lunar eclipse will come with open arms. Making the eclipse even better? The fact that it falls during a “supermoon”.

A supermoon is a full moon which occurs during the time period when the moon makes its closest approach to the Earth on its elliptical orbit. This results in the largest apparent size of the moon as seen from Earth, called “perigee”. The moon can appear up to 14x larger from the Earth during this time period.

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John Homenuk

Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, here’s how to see it

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The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight into the early morning hours of Thursday, and astronomers are suggesting the potential for up to 100 meteors per hour.

There’s something humbling about laying in the grass and watching meteors streak throughout the night sky. The Perseid meteor shower provides arguably the best show of meteors in the night sky each year. Its annual occurrence during warm summer nights makes it easily the most comfortable meteor shower to watch of the bunch of “major” showers, many of which fall during the colder winter months. This year, a very dim moon will make viewing even more ideal during the peak of the meteor shower.

Why is the moonlight so important? To put it simply, it upstages the light of the meteors streaking throughout the sky. When the moon is full, you may still see meteors — but the smaller, dimmer activity (which is typically more frequent than the bright ones) is blocked out by the bright light of the moon in the sky. This year, the thin crescent moon is not expected to interfere at all.

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John Homenuk

Today is, without a doubt, Pluto day

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For most of us on Earth, this will be our last chance to see a new planet for the first time up close and personal. Today, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will finally make its pass nearest to Pluto, the much debated and no longer official planet. New Horizons has spent the past 9 years in space, traveling over 3 billion miles and passing most “landmark” planets in our solar system along the way. On July 14th, 2015, it will finally reach Pluto. No spacecraft, satellite, or high resolution imagery has come even remotely close to what New Horizons will provide us with in terms of detail regarding Pluto.

Already, New Horizons is allowing NASA’s team to make some incredible discoveries and bring forth some new information. While Pluto’s size has been debated for many years, we now have a very firm estimate on the size of Pluto. NASA’s team of specialists calculated a diameter of 1,473 miles. This is slightly larger than previous estimates. Perhaps even more exciting is the prospect of high resolution imagery which New Horizons will capture.

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