Watch before dawn on Sunday. With the waxing crescent moon setting before midnight (on October 20), that means a dark sky between midnight and dawn, or during the best viewing hours for the Orionid meteors. On a dark, moonless night, the Orionids exhibit a maximum of about 15 meteors per hour. These fast-moving meteors occasionally leave persistent trains and bright fireballs. If you trace these meteors backward, they seem to come from the Club of the famous constellation Orion the Hunter. You might know Orion’s bright, ruddy star Betelgeuse. The radiant is north of Betelgeuse. The Orionids have a broad and irregular peak that isn’t easy to predict. More meteors tend to fly after midnight, and the Orionids are typically at their best in the wee hours before dawn. The best viewing for the Orionids in 2012 will probably be before dawn on October 21..
see http://cantonbecker.com/retrograde for details…
For this eclipse totality will be visible from northern Australia and the southern Pacific Ocean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_November_13,_2012
The most populous city to experience totality will be Cairns, which will experience 2 minutes of totality just an hour after daybreak (6:38 am AEST) with the sun at an altitude of just 14°. Norfolk Island, a small pacific island west of Australia, will experience a partial eclipse with a maximum of 98% of the sun obscured at 9:37 am NFT and an altitude of 42°.
Parts of northern New Zealand including Auckland will experience a partial eclipse with over 80% of the sun obscured. Christchurch and points north will see at least 60% of the sun obscured. Maximum eclipse over New Zealand will occur around 10:30 AM NZDT (21:30 UTC).
Parts of central Chile, specifically the Los RÃos and Los Lagos regions from Valdivia (63% obscured) south to Quellón (54% obscured) will see a partial eclipse with over half the sun obscured at sunset, over the coast. Points north up to about Santiago will see the eclipse begin as the sun is setting.
Radiating from the constellation Leo the Lion, the Leonid meteor shower is famous. Historically, this shower has produced some of the greatest meteor storms in history – at least one in living memory, 1966 – with rates as high as many thousands of meteors per hour. Indeed, on that beautiful night in 1966, the meteors did fall like rain. Some who watched the shower said they felt as if they needed to grip the ground, so strong was the impression of Earth plowing along through space, fording the meteoroid stream. The meteors, after all, were all streaming from a single point in the sky – the radiant point – in this case in the constellation Leo the Lion. Leonid meteor storms sometimes recur in cycles of 33 to 34 years, but the Leonids around the turn of the century – while wonderful for many observers – did not match the shower of 1966. And, in most years, the Lion whimpers rather than roars, producing a maximum of perhaps 10-15 meteors per hour. Like most meteor showers, the Leonids ordinarily pick up steam after midnight and display the greatest meteor numbers just before dawn. In 2012, however, the waxing crescent moon will setting at early evening, leaving a dark night for Leonid meteor shower
see http://cantonbecker.com/retrograde for details…