Calendar

Up to 120 meteors per hour. Begins December 7 ends December 17 with today as the peak.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=geminid+meteor+shower+2010

Why party? For one thing — if you’re of drinking age anyway — this is the last time you’ll have the opportunity to celebrate the union of a full moon and the Winter Solstice in your lifetime. (This won’t happen until Dec 21, 2094.)

Not only that, but if you’re in North or South America, you can look forward to a full eclipse of the moon. Totality begins around midnight Pacific time if you stay up late on Monday. See:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moon+eclipse+dec+2010

HOWL! Dance! Celebrate the return of the sun and the antics of the moon…

Hope you had a *great* 2010. Drop me a note to tell me how your party went.

– Canton Becker
canton@gmail.com

This is the only total lunar eclipse for 2010. Visible from your area? Check here:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+lunar+eclipse+2010

“The entire event is visible from North America and western South America. Observers along South America’s east coast miss the late stages of the eclipse because they occur after moonset. Likewise much of Europe and Africa experience moonset while the eclipse is in progress. Only northern Scandinavians can catch the entire event from Europe. For observers in eastern Asia the Moon rises in eclipse. None of the eclipse is visible from south and east Africa, the Middle East or South Asia.”

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2010.html#LE2010Dec21T

See:

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, respectively, in the sense that the length of time elapsed between sunrise and sunset on this day is a minimum for the year. Of course, daylight saving time means that the first Sunday in April has 23 hours and the last Sunday in October has 25 hours, but these human meddlings with the calendar and do not correspond to the actual number of daylight hours.

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/WinterSolstice.html

Not usually as spectacular as the Perseids (August) or Geminids (December) showers, but this year the two Big Showers happen very near the full moon. However, this Quadrantids shower will take place in the deep dark of the new moon — so this may in fact be the best shower in 2011.

From Wikipedia: “The peak intensity is exceedingly sharp: the meteor rates exceed one-half of their highest value for only about 8 hours (compared to two days for the August Perseids). This means that the stream of particles that produces this shower is narrow – and apparently deriving from and within the last 500-years from some orbiting body.”

The eclipse will be visible over most of Europe, the Arabian peninsula, North Africa and Western Asia. See http://tinyurl.com/284fkyp