Political Crossfire Forums

[JLB]

FYI, it should start around 11:30.

[Lumina]

JLB wrote: FYI, it should start around 11:30.

Visible pretty much everywhere? If so, I'll be waiting outside. Thanks for posting this heads-up, JLB!

[Gremlin]

Lumina wrote: JLB wrote: FYI, it should start around 11:30.

Visible pretty much everywhere? If so, I'll be waiting outside. Thanks for posting this heads-up, JLB!


Its annual around November 11th-22nd.
The days might be a little tighter then that but its been a long time since ive been in Earth Science class.... or high school for that matter. :-D

[[Bible]Monkey]

JLB wrote: FYI, it should start around 11:30.

Yeah, thanks JLB-I forgot about it this year.

Lumina wrote: Visible pretty much everywhere? If so, I'll be waiting outside. Thanks for posting this heads-up, JLB!

Strong Leonid Meteor Shower Expected This Weekend

Look for it in Leo. Go outside and find the North Star-brightest star in the North. If you hold your hand out flat at arms length, two and a half-three hand widths under the North star is the lip of the big dipper-North Star stays put, big Dipper handle rotates around it like a clock hand all night.

The two stars -outside edge of the Big Dipper, the edge you'd drink from-point up at the North Star .

The ' inside edge' of the dipper ( part you wouldn't put your lips on to drink from ) point down at Leo.

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/java/Leo.html

Put the right hand scrolly bar in the middle-that's what you see from the equator-the middle of the right hand vertical scroll bar is the equator. Scroll up until you see the Big Dipper ( Ursa Major) -they draw more blue lines on it than the conventional dipper shape, but you'll spot the dipper shape in the upper left portion of Ursa major.

Scroll down from the Big dipper to Leo-that's where the meteors come from.

If you put the right hand scrolly bar to the bottom, that's what they see in Australia.

[PricklySponge]

Perfect distraction to steal the guys cat traps. 8:)

[[Bible]Monkey]

PricklySponge wrote: Perfect distraction to steal the guys cat traps. 8:)

:lol: I like the way you think.
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Clear night, but Leo was still too low over here at 113° Longitude, and the northern lights , while quiet, still are shimmering ( they're broad, from NNW to NNE, but low on the horizon tonight) in the key spot at NNE-enough to blank out most of the strays-but I saw two strays shooting by at NNE in my 15 minutes outside tonight-Aurora muted them though-durn.

Anyone else see any -particularly you middle and east coasters? Should be quite a show on the East Coast, and Europe.

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Cool fact about the Big Dipper - The U.S Army used to use it for an eye chart. If you have 20-20 vision, you can see which star in the big dipper is a double star. What I thought was interesting about that -if you magnify those two -each one of them is also a double star.

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Ursa minor, the little dipper.
http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/java/Ursa_Minor.html

The end of the handle star is Polaris , the North Star, brightest one in the north. Center of the Universe-never moves-the way home-of the human eye

Put the vertical scroller about an eight or a quarter of an inch below the top , so the end star on the handle of the little dipper ( Polaris, the North Star ) is almost at the top. Put the horizontal scoller about half way -in the middle, but a little right of the middle-so you can see Ursa Major, the Big Dipper , and how the two outside edge stars of the big dipper-Merak and Dubhe - if you drew an imaginary line through them - point to Polaris.

Now , if you have Ursa minors - little dipper's handle -end star almost touching the top, and the bottom scoller in the middle -so you can see the big dipper and the little dipper at the same time-move the bottom scroller from right to left-and you can see how the whole Universe rotates around the North Star ( which happens every night) -which is why we can tell time from the big dipper/North Star, and why the North Star was THE star for navigation.

I thought it was cool that the North Star-Polaris- was the only visible, useful ( neccessary) one -the one that never moves. But.....

permanence is an illusion....

Quote: Because the Earth's axis is precessing (like a spinning top wobbles around), Polaris is only temporarily at the North Pole. In about 14,000 years, Vega will be the North Star and another 14,000 years after that, it will be Polaris again

[Sid]

Stupid clouds.

[JLB]

I went to the drag races "Night of Fire" with the jet cars, so came home basically deaf and blind. I saw one shooting star,and my kids saw a few. The neighbors all had their exterior lights on, so it wasn't good conditions.

The best skies I've ever seen have been in Wyoming and Montana. I worked out at Yellowstone one summer when I was 18, and I could see individual satellites go by with the naked eye. I told my wife about that before we went out to tour Glacier and Yellowstione a few years ago, and she didn't believe me until she saw it for herself.

[ubikk]

JLB wrote: FYI, it should start around 11:30.

Unfortunately, it's been cloudy this weekend where i am.

[FCTE]

Yeah the darkness in the Chicago suburbs is perfect for viewing stars and meteors.

[jawsome]

I didn't know about this...was it visible in CA?

I was up on the hills over looking the Bay last night around that time, so we couldn't have missed it because it was unbelievably clear--you could see all of SF lit up and beautiful.