Tag: Skywatching

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Prime time for the Geminid meteor shower

Image: Geminids
A Geminid meteor makes an impression in an all-sky photo captured in 2011. (Credit: NASA)

This year’s Geminid meteor shower is reaching its peak, and Seattle’s weather just might cooperate.

Tonight’s forecast calls for partly cloudy skies and a low chance of precipitation, which is unusual for a Seattle holiday season.

That adds to the allure for this year’s Geminid display, which is expected to be out of the ordinary.

“With August’s Perseids obscured by bright moonlight, the Geminids will be the best shower this year,” Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, said in a news release. “The thin, waning crescent moon won’t spoil the show.”

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Hopes rise for a gem of a Geminid meteor shower

Image: Geminids
A Geminid meteor makes an impression in an all-sky photo captured in 2011. (Credit: NASA)

The buildup has begun for this year’s best meteor shower, the Geminids, and what makes it even better is that Seattle’s weather just might cooperate.

For the week leading up to the Geminids’ peak on the night of Dec. 13-14, the forecast calls for partly cloudy skies and a low chance of precipitation, which is unusual for a Seattle holiday season.

That adds to the allure for this year’s Geminid display, which is expected to be out of the ordinary.

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‘Tis the season … for a holiday supermoon

Supermoon
An image of the moon taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is shown in two halves to illustrate the difference between the apparent size of a supermoon (left) and a “micromoon” (right).

Supermoon Sunday is at hand, and although some may scoff, the supermoon concept provides a good excuse to take a close look at a celestial sight we often take for granted.

By some measures, Dec. 3’s full moon is the only supermoon of 2017. The liberal definition would be a full or new moon that’s at or near its closest approach to Earth in its orbit. My definition is stricter: There’s only one supermoon in a given year, reserved for the full moon with the biggest apparent size.

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Northern lights could flare up if you’re lucky

Mount Adams aurora
Northern lights shine over Mount Adams in a Sept. 27 image. (MtAdams.tv via Brenda Turnbull)

The chances of seeing the northern lights are higher for the next couple of nights, but Western Washington’s trademark fall weather could cloud things over.

Literally.

We’re talking about two types of weather here: The space weather side of the equation, relating to geomagnetic storms sparked by the solar wind, looks promising. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center says there’s a heightened chance of minor (G1) to moderate (G2) storms tonight and on Wednesday night.

Wednesday night’s space weather forecast suggests an aurora should be visible across the northern tier of the United States.

However, the atmospheric weather side of the equation plays a role as well. National Weather Service’s Seattle office notes that clouds will be approaching Western Washington after midnight.

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Eclipse Journal: Mystery plane identified

Plane and corona
The sun’s corona silhouettes an airplane during the total solar eclipse. (Dustin Huntington Photo via SpaceWeather.com)

GeekWire reporters and correspondents documented the 2017 solar eclipse from the Pacific Northwest, including our home base in Seattle and locations in the “Path of Totality” in Oregon. Follow our eclipse adventures, including the mysterious case of the plane and the corona, in our running live blog.

Check out all the blog items on GeekWire.

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Look back at the eclipse in a different light

Eclipse composite image
This week’s solar eclipse progresses through totality in a composite image from Madras, Ore. (NASA Photo / Aubrey Gemignani)

This week’s total solar eclipse ranked among history’s most widely documented celestial events, thanks to streaming video and social media. NASA and its media partners announced today that 12.1 million unique viewers watched the spectacle via NASA.gov’s live stream, and millions more saw it by other means – including their own cameras and their own eyes.

Most of the pictures focused on the blacked-out sun and the delicate corona surrounding the disk, but there were lots of other perspectives on the first coast-to-coast, all-American total eclipse to take place in 99 years.

Find out about five favorite perspectives on GeekWire.

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Did you miss totality? Relive it with this video

MADRAS, Ore. – Some skywatchers spend thousands of dollars on telescopes, cameras and other hardware to document a solar eclipse. John E. Hoots did it with a Sony Handycam video camera.

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Eclipse dims the sun from coast to coast

Total eclipse
The eclipse as viewed from Bald Mountain, Idaho, photographed by Kevin Lisota. The purple coloring on the underside is an eclipse phenomenon known as Baily’s Beads, in which the craters on the moon’s surface allow partial sunlight to shine through. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

MADRAS, Ore. – The spectacle that skywatchers made years’ worth of plans to see finally happened today, darkening the sky during a total solar eclipse.

The moon began covering up the sun over Oregon just after 9 a.m. PT, with thousands of cameras equipped with solar filters trained on the sight.

The shadow of the moon streaked eastward from Oregon to the coast of South Carolina, delivering the first all-American total solar eclipse in 99 years.

The temperature in summery Madras, where thousands of eclipse-watchers gathered, cooled from 73 to 64 degrees Fahrenheit as the eclipse neared its climax.

Just before totality, sunlight waned as if someone was turning down a dimmer switch. A wave of darkness swept in from the west. Day turned into night, to the cheers of the Oregon Solarfest assembly at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds in Madras.

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Oregon feels the calm before totality

Prelude to eclipse
Clouds partially obscure the sun over Oregon Solarfest in Madras, Ore., precisely 24 hours in advance of Monday’s total solar eclipse. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

MADRAS, Ore. – Traffic to Oregon’s total eclipse zone has been surprisingly light over the past couple of days, but officials say they’re not out of the woods yet.

The traffic flow to Salem and Corvallis on the west side of the Cascades, and to Madras and points eastward on the dry side of the mountains, has been “very manageable,” Lou Torres, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation, told GeekWire today.

“We do anticipate that it’ll pick up later this afternoon, and into tonight and Monday morning,” he said.

After Torres spoke, Oregon DOT and the Oregon State Police reported slowdowns on Highway 97 between Redmond and Madras. Tripcheck.com’s traffic flow map showed troublesome red spots, and traffic through downtown Madras was bumper-to-bumper.

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Last-minute guide to the total solar eclipse

Traffic in Oregon
Cars are lined up on Highway 26 heading east from Prineville, Ore., several days before the total solar eclipse. (Ochoco National Forest Photo)

It’s prime time at last for the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse, America’s first coast-to-coast dose of totality in 99 years.

Maybe you’re a veteran eclipse-chaser who’s been preparing for this since 1979, the last time a total eclipse was visible from the mainland U.S. Or maybe you’re a newbie who just heard that the moon is going to cover the sun.

Either way, it’s not too late to enjoy the eclipse, whether you’re planning to get within the 70-mile-wide path of totality or stay at home. But you do have to be prepared, especially if you haven’t done any planning until now.

The bad news is that traffic and accommodations are already getting jammed up, and viewing equipment is in vanishingly short supply. The good news is that it takes as little as two pieces of paper and a pin to get a good look at the partial solar eclipse.

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