Eclipse - Blog Posts
Picture of the Day - January 14, 2019
The silhouette of a gas giant and it rings.
Approaching Eclipse
Picture of the Day 2 - October 30, 2018
The approaching shadow of an eclipse across an alien desert.
Lunar Shadow
Picture of the Day - October 14, 2018
Small satellite casting its shadow across a gas giant.
Gas Giant Eclipse
Picture of the Day - October 13, 2018
The sky of a large moon orbiting a gas giant right before an eclipse.
O’Sirus System - Post 1 (Hellish Moon)
We have gone deeper in the Triangulum Galaxy. We are now only 1,473 light years from the NGC 604 Nebula. Our next system is the O’Sirus System, a dim Orange Dwarf orbited by 12 planets, including 1 world that supports life.
The lone satellite orbiting the third planet. Roughly a third of Earth’s mass with a super-heated water vapor atmosphere. Atmospheric temperatures reach up to 1,000 K (1,340 °F), and glowing clouds of Titanium Dioxide hoover over the moon. The sun is only a K9V type star, but at only 0.11 AU, it covers an area of the sky 7.5 times larger than a Full Moon on Earth.
Space Engine System ID: RS 1229-171-8-11850488-229
High Resolution Pics
Picture 1 - Volcanic moon with glowing metallic clouds.
Picture 2 - Atmospheric Haze
Picture 3 - The Surface
Picture 4 - Lunar Sky
Picture 5 - Eclipse
2017 Solar eclipse Colorado
Gotta wake up pretty early in the morning to see the blue blood moon!
SUPER BLUE BLOOD MOON
Heads up, this is tomorrow night! I hope it's clear where I am to see it but considering I'm in the Pacific Northwest, I don't have super high hopes. Get a look if you can, though! Rare to see a blue moon that's actually red :)
A Total Lunar Eclipse is Coming: 10 Things to Know
If you were captivated by August’s total solar eclipse, there’s another sky show to look forward to on Jan. 31: a total lunar eclipse!
Below are 10 things to know about this astronomical event, including where to see it, why it turns the Moon into a deep red color and more…
1. First things first. What’s the difference between solar and lunar eclipses? We’ve got the quick and easy explanation in this video:
2. Location, location, location. What you see will depend on where you are. The total lunar eclipse will favor the western U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and British Columbia on Jan. 31. Australia and the Pacific Ocean are also well placed to see a major portion of the eclipse, if not all of it.
3. Color play. So, why does the Moon turn red during a lunar eclipse? Here’s your answer:
4. Scientists, stand by. What science can be done during a lunar eclipse? Find out HERE.
5. Show and tell. What would Earth look like from the Moon during a lunar eclipse? See for yourself with this artist’s concept HERE.
6. Ask me anything. Mark your calendars to learn more about the Moon during our our Reddit AMA happening Monday, Jan. 29, from 3-4 pm EST/12-1 pm PST.
7. Social cues. Make sure to follow @NASAMoon and @LRO_NASA for all of the latest Moon news leading up to the eclipse and beyond.
8. Watch year-round. Can’t get enough of observing the Moon? Make a DIY Moon Phases Calendar and Calculator that will keep all of the dates and times for the year’s moon phases right at your fingertips HERE.
Then, jot down notes and record your own illustrations of the Moon with a Moon observation journal, available to download and print from moon.nasa.gov.
9. Lesson learned. For educators, pique your students’ curiosities about the lunar eclipse with this Teachable Moment HERE.
10. Coming attraction. There will be one more lunar eclipse this year on July 27, 2018. But you might need your passport—it will only be visible from central Africa and central Asia. The next lunar eclipse that can be seen all over the U.S. will be on Jan. 21, 2019. It won’t be a blue moon, but it will be a supermoon.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
Inner corona and prominences during Monday’s total solar eclipse
via reddit
Check out the makeshift pinhole-camera results from 99% totality! Leaves and my own hands work quite nicely to get an image of the little sliver of sunlight that was left. I had eclipse glasses but don't have any pictures from them: 99% is still not enough to reduce the sun's light very much. It got a little gloomier and I talked about it on Twitter but otherwise it was pretty uneventful! I'm glad I'm not on the road home from eclipsing. It would be cool to see totality one day, though.
Does an ecplispe cause any unusual effects on the Earth?
Yes, and this is one of the things we’re hoping to study more with this eclipse! If you are in totality, you’ll notice a significant temperature drop. We are also expecting to see changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and ionosphere. You can help us document these changes using the GLOBE Observer app https://www.globe.gov/globe-data/data-entry/globe-observer ! There are lots of great citizen science going on during this eclipse, and we’d love to have everyone here helping out! https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/citizen-explorers
What is so special about the solar eclipse to you??
Huh, that’s a very good question and I probably answer it differently each time I get asked it. I love the fact that in totality you can see the solar atmosphere and get a chance to see the magnetic field structure of the Sun. This is something that you can’t normally do. I also love the idea that we’re going to be able to test a bunch of ionospheric models with the help of citizen scientist! This again is a very unique opportunity! But probably the thing that seems so special about this particular eclipse is seeing how excited everyone is about it! Most days I sit in my office working on my science (which I think is the best science and most interesting thing in the world- but I’m probably biased about that) and not too many other people in the world are all that excited about it. But with the eclipse, I get to share how cool this science is, and it’s amazing to see everyone get involved!
In the ancient world (and, honestly, today too) there’s nothing spookier than the sky doing something weird. Auroras, meteors, comets, and eclipses all fell under the category of scary, prophetic bad omens, but don’t worry! In this podcast I explain what they are! There are also some opportunities to see these astronomical events in action coming up. The annual Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak August 11-13 and there will be a total eclipse of the Sun (or a partial eclipse, depending where you’re viewing it from) across North America on August 21, 2017.
Below the cut are sources, music credits, vocabulary list, and the transcript of this episode. Check out the glossary, it’s a big one! There are also some cool eclipse-viewing resources I’ll highlight so you can view this phenomenon safely.
Let me know what you think I should research by messaging me here, tweeting at me at @HDandtheVoid, or asking me to my face if you know me in real life. And please check out the podcast on iTunes, rate it or review it if you’d like, subscribe, and maybe tell your friends about it if you think they’d like to listen!
(My thoughts on the next episode were spectroscopy, probes through the ages, and the transit of Venus. Let me know by the 2nd and I’ll have the next podcast up on August 14th, barring any delays due to trip fatigue!)
Glossary
auroras - a light display that occurs when a magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by solar wind that charged particles scatter into the upper atmosphere and lose their energy.
comet - a small, icy body that orbits the Sun. When its orbit takes it close to the Sun, the comet warms up and releases gases and debris that produce a visible atmosphere, sometimes called the comet’s tail.
corona - the hot outer atmosphere of the Sun.
eclipse - when three celestial bodies line up so that one obstructs the visibility of the other two. A solar eclipse can be partial (only part of the Sun is obscured by the Moon), total (all of the Sun is hidden by the Moon), or annular ( the Moon is close to Earth and appears too small to completely cover the Sun completely).
Exeligmos cycle - a cycle that is 3 times the saros cycle, or 669 months. It is more accurate means of predicting eclipses and additionally predicts eclipses that will be visible from a location close to the initial eclipse.
Inex cycle - a cycle of 28 years and 345 days long used to predict an eclipse that’s visible in the opposite hemisphere. For example, if an eclipse happens in the Northern hemisphere, one Inex cycle later there will be an eclipse visible in the Southern hemisphere. The Inex cycle does not ensure that both kinds of eclipses will be of the same type.
meteor - a small rocky or metallic body in space, smaller than asteroids. Contact with the Earth’s atmosphere causes a meteor to burn up in a streak of light. Many meteors entering the atmosphere within a few minutes of each other is called a meteor shower. If a meteor impacts on Earth’s surface without burning up, it is then classified as a meteorite.
penumbra - a region where only a portion of the light source is obscured. When the light source is completely blocked, this darkest part of a shadow is called the umbra.
perihelion - an object’s closest approach to the Sun in its orbit. Its greatest distance from the Sun is called its aphelion.
perigee - a satellite’s closest approach to the Earth in its orbit. Its greatest distance from Earth is called its apogee.
radiant - the point in the sky where objects appear to come from. For example, the Perseid meteor shower appears to come from the constellation Perseus.
Saros cycle - a cycle of 223 months that is used to predict eclipses.
solar prominence - a large, bright feature anchored to the Sun's surface and extend outwards into the Sun's corona. A prominence forms in about a day out of plasma, a hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. Stable prominences may last for several months, looping hundreds of thousands of miles into space as plasma flows along a structure of the Sun’s magnetic field that has burst outward, releasing the plasma.
syzygy - the straight-line alignment of three celestial bodies.
Script/Transcript
Sources
Perseids via EarthSky
Perseids via NASA
Meteor showers and viewing tips via StarDate
Comet Swift-Tuttle via NASA
My local library’s information and recommended reading list for learning about eclipses. Love you, Multnomah County!
Map of the Path of Totality across the United States
Solar eclipse map and calendar via the Exploratorium website
Free eclipse glasses at libraries via Lunar and Planetary Institute
Guide to making a pinhole camera to view the eclipse via NASA
Historical eclipses via NASA
Historical eclipses via Astronomy Magazine
“Even if the Moon, however, does sometimes cover the Sun entirely, the eclipse does not have duration or extension; but a kind of light is visible about the rim which keeps the shadow from being profound and absolute.”
Solar prominence via NASA
Solar flares via NASA
Fred Espenak’s guide to eclipses. He’s a former NASA astrophysicist who’s credited with all the eclipse predictions so I trust him.
Some good but confusing charts on solar eclipse Saros cycles via NASA
“Van den Bergh placed all 8,000 solar eclipses in von Oppolzer's Canon der Finsternisse (1887) into a large two-dimensional matrix. Each Saros series was arranged as a separate column containing every eclipse in chronological order. The individual Saros columns were then staggered so that the horizontal rows each corresponded to different Inex series.”
A Danish webpage on calculating eclipses
Hawks, Ellison. The Boy’s Book of Astronomy. Frederick A. Stokes Co: New York, 1914. Located in Google Books preview. (Heads up, this is a fairly racist source.)
Richard Cohen. Chasing the Sun. Random House: NY, 2010.
Robert A. Henning: “different forms, wavering, many colours diffusing and changing, sometimes far away, sometimes filling the heavens around and above, plunging great dropping spears and sheets of colour earthward towards your very head as though a great hand were dropping colour like burning oil” (43).
Ernest W. Hawkes: “whistling, crackling noise” (44).
Jeremy Belknap: “like running one’s thumb and forefinger down a silk scarf” (44).
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Eclippse’ by Radical Face off his album Sunn Moonn Eclippse. Check out the video in the album link, it’s amazing.
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
Hahaha, right after I start out a podcast talking about how we’ll never poke the Sun, it turns out we’re sending a probe to do just that!
Solar System: Things to Know This Week
Mark your calendars for summer 2018: That’s when we’re launching a spacecraft to touch the sun.
In honor of our first-ever mission to the heart of the solar system, this week we’re delving into the life and times of this powerful yellow dwarf star.
1. Meet Parker
Parker Solar Probe, our first mission to go to the sun, is named after Eugene Parker, an American astrophysicist who first theorized that the sun constantly sends out a flow of particles and energy called the solar wind. This historic mission will explore one of the last regions of the solar system to be visited by a spacecraft and help scientists unlock answers to questions they’ve been pondering for more than five decades.
2. Extra SPF, Please
Parker Solar Probe will swoop within 4 million miles of the sun’s surface, facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it. The mission will provide new data on solar activity to help us better understand our home star and its activity - information that can improve forecasts of major space-weather events that could impact life on Earth.
3. Majorly Massive
The sun is the center of our solar system and makes up 99.8 percent of the mass of the entire solar system. If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be about the size of a nickel.
4. Different Spin
Since the sun is not a solid body, different parts of the sun rotate at different rates. At the equator, the sun spins once about every 25 days, but at its poles the sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.
5. Can’t Stand on It
The sun is a star and a star doesn’t have a solid surface. Rather, it’s a ball of ionized gas 92.1% hydrogen (H2) and 7.8% helium (He) held together by its own gravity.
6. Center of Attention
The sun isn’t a planet, so it doesn’t have any moons. But, the sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and hundreds of thousands to trillions of comets and icy bodies.
7. It’s Hot in There
And we mean really, really hot. The temperature at the sun’s core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. However, its atmosphere, the corona, can reach temperatures of 3 million degrees. (That’s as if it got hotter the farther away you got from a fire, instead of cooler!) Parker Solar Probe will help scientists solve the mystery of why the corona’s temperature is so much higher than the surface.
8. Travel Conditions
The sun influences the entire solar system, so studying it helps us better understand the space weather that our astronauts and spacecraft travel through.
9. Life on the Sun?
Better to admire from afar. Thanks to its hot, energetic mix of gases and plasma, the sun can’t be home to living things. However, we can thank the sun for making life on Earth possible by providing the warmth and energy that supply Earth’s food chain.
10. Chance of a Lifetime
Last but not least, don’t forget that the first total solar eclipse to sweep across the U.S. from coast-to-coast since 1918 is happening on August 21, 2017. Our toolkit has you need to know to about it.
Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
A ‘Ring of Fire’ solar eclipse is a rare phenomenon that occurs when the moon’s orbit is at its apogee: the part of its orbit farthest away from the Earth. Because the moon is so far away, it seems smaller than normal to the human eye. The result is that the moon doesn't entirely block out our view of the sun, but leaves an “annulus,” or ring of sunlight glowing around it. Hence the term “annular” eclipse rather than a “total” eclipse.
One-year countdown to solar eclipse, August 21, 2017: path of totality overlaid on U.S. population density and interstate map.
Alice thanks your horniness Bella 😏
We all know Jasper always felt Bella's horniest
I leave you alone for two minutes and the wolves descend. Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen in The Twilight Saga (2008-2012)
Bella Swan + Outfits
My gaze is an eclipse
@fiery-hairedsuccubus18
@we-are-fremen
