QUARDRANTIDS METEOR SHOWER — Star Hustler NetPaper Report

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QUARDRANTIDS METEOR SHOWER Star Hustler Report http://wordnetpaper.tripod.com

The Quadrantids Meteor Shower is Friday January 4. Look to the East my people, to the East after Midnite and bundle up. This is the first (and briefest) of the celestial sky fireworks this year, but there are also not one but TWO comets also in the night sky. And don't forget red planet Mars at its closest to earth in years...

The Quadrantids Meteor Shower every January is the first such of these celestial displays that are up, so named after a defunct constellation for a sighting instrument like the astrolabe.

This meteor shower is unique in that it is caused by an asteroid rather than a comet as almost all others are. Scientists are very interested to find out if the large space boulder was cast off by the solar cooking that happens when these comets round the Sun.

It is these Sol-ar winds that causes the millions miles-long tails that are their most thrilling features, if you can get out of the city lights to a rural area.

To see the "Shooting Stars," with their brief, long streaks of light look toward the East, and way up in the sky. They're near the constellation Hercules. Its the one that looks like a big guy lifting something, near that Backwards Question Mark, the head of the lion of Leo.

As usual go out after Midnight, when the Sun is on the other side of the planet. Some of the streaks are quite faint and the darker the better. The frequency of these meteors are also better seen just before dawn, more agreeable for early risers.

It'll be over in a few hours, with several of the fast bright streaks per minute in the first such display of the year. The nighttime extravaganzas are actually frequent occurrences in the calendar year. I was surprised how many there were when I looked them up at http://stardate.org , http://heavens-above.com and http://www.heavens-above.com/ .

The Space and Science Tech portions of the websites at http://cnn.com/ also have links to astronomical sites, as well as http://usatoday.com .

Comet Holmes is still in the area around Cassiopeia, that bent "W" or "M" high in the Northeast. It’s a Circumpolar constellation, a star grouping that wheels around the North Star, so it depends on when you go out. The ancients called these the Eternal Stars because they never set at night.

Holmes was supposed to be dim, then something popped out of its side, and fresh ice was exposed to the Sun's solar wind. It brightened to a factor of millions. Its still up there, but dimming past naked eye visibility. Binoculars will work fine, and don't forget to employ the Optical features of a camcorder or digital camera.

The people at http://spaceweather.com say: "No one knows why Holmes occasionally explodes. Theories range from tiny moonlets crashing into the comet's icy surface to great comet-caverns collapsing under the stress of sunlight… it reminds us to keep an eye on Comet 17P/Holmes.

"Finding the comet is easy. Tonight, after sunset, take your binoculars outside and scan the northern constellation Perseus. Holmes is readily visible as a big pale fuzzball near the variable star Algol. The view through a backyard telescope is dynamite!" Comet 8P/Tuttle is on its inbound track on its 14 year orbit. Its magnitude 5-6, which is at the limit of naked-eye observers. (the larger the number, the fainter. Small is better. Negative numbers is best.) Its higher, so use the point of the M or W to find it, its like an arrow pointing straight at it. Use the other point of the same to find the lower Holmes. Remember to breathe.

AFRICAN DESCENDED ASTRONOMICAL HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS

The Big Dipper isn't a real constellation, although it was long known in Africa as "the Dipping Gourd." Its designated an Asterism, or star grouping like the Summer and Winter Triangles, and they are often parts of real constellations.

During Slavery Times, Runaways were told to follow its "Cup" to the North, to freedom. The two end stars of the Cup, if a line is drawn up from them points straight to Polaris.

This is why the first Black newspaper was called The "North Star." Our history still is bound to the stars!

There are many probes already in space from other missions and other countries such as Japan and Italy and the European Space Agency that can be retasked to take a peek at other Visitors to our Sol-ar System.

Deep Impact is one, that was the mission a couple of years ago where an ice breaking spike was fired into a comet to take a look at the frozen innards. It can't shoot anything but pictures now, but Deep Impact still has its camera and the datalink ready for the cometary close-ups.

Another is Stardust, built to fly though the trails of comets and collect the bits of it. It actually returned samples to Terra for study. Or at least it tried to: somebody goofed in the math and the chute deployed too late, crashing the lander and the precious glass plates with its space specimens strewn all over the Utah desert. Oops!

We don't want that to happen on a manned Mars mission. (More on that with the future "Notes from the Mars Underground." And there is one. And we're serious about Red Planet colonization, too. But I digress.)

COSMIC SLOP; HUGGED UP WITH 'ORIGINAL CYN'

Everybody's favourite Meteor Showers are the yearly Leonids in August, when its summertime and people can be out late and in comfort, not bundled up with blankets like one of the Original Cyns and I did one time. We were all hugged and cuddled up on the hood of the car to keep warm, to the sounds of the ticking engine as it cooled while we watched the celestial streaks over Lake Michigan.

In Oklahoma as media guests of the state tourism board outside on the plains of Guthrie during the Leonids in August a few years ago, we saw one that left a sparkle like fireworks. I've read that if its real quiet in the countryside you can actually hear the explosions all the way down during a Meteor Storm, where there are hundreds, sometimes even thousands of meteorites per hour. It looks like driving through a snow shower with the bright lights on.

Meteors in the night sky are largely the result of cosmic debris from cometary fly-bys, and the Earth runs into them. If they make it all the way down, then they are termed MeteorITES.

They're usually the size of grains of sand, but the fierce ionization from the planet slamming into them at 25 miles a second causes the streaks that can be seen all the way down to the planet's surface from the wisps of the upper atmosphere at more than 80,000 feet up.

NOTE TO SCIENCE TEACHERS: You can also hear the ionizations on a radio, on the AM band between stations, its like a faint hissing with each streak. You can see some interference by the use of a television set too, along with some leftover Big Bang background radiation, but that's a bit beyond our discussion here. Email me.

The Military even has a special cream they use to remove the troublesome pitting high altitude jets' canopies get from always hitting the meteoric dust way up there. Its a lot different than bugs hitting the car windshield!

"THEY" don't talk about it hardly at all, but there are rumours that some military aircraft -- maybe even civilian jetliners -- have been struck and possibly downed from meteoric impact. Military airspace is much higher than civilian airplanes, from about 50,000 to 75,000 feet.

Fireballs, or Bolides are meteors from large rocks, about fist sized that are capable of making audible sounds, even sonic booms as they head downward. A whole stadium full of people in Phoenix saw and heard this a few years ago. They're quite a sight, and its on my lifetime list.

CAMP TJ PEACE SKYWATCHING

I saw a "skipper" meteor once with the boys during the annual Father-Son Camp TJ Peace http://community.webshots.com/user/the511 , held the first weekend after Labour Day in Blackhawk park in Southeast Wisconsin near the Mississippi River.

With our blankets we lay on the ground head to head, head to foot, scanning the skies. It went in and out of the atmosphere, leaving a dotted line. It was one of the few we saw and it was amazing.

NEW CONSTELLATIONS FOR OUR TIMES: UHURU; BIRD OF PREY; THE DOCTOR; ETC

I once came up with a bunch of new constellations for Our Times named after Star Trek. (The Orion/Osiris/Ausar constellation and the stars off to either side made me come up with the "Bird of Prey," plunging Earthward. Another called Andromeda after an African princess I renamed for the African Lt. Uhuru, Communications Officer of the Federation starship Enterprise. And so forth.

They're near the constellation Hercules. Its the one that looks like a big guy lifting something, near that Backwards Question Mark, which is the head of the lion that makes the Horoscope Sign of Leo.

Leo may have been the original model for the incredibly ancient Sphinx lion sculpture on the Gizeh Plateau outside Cairo in Northeast Africa, also known as KMT or Kemet/Khamit, and what their students the Greeks called "Egypt." http://community.webshots,com/user/travelgriot .

That's a whole separate Star Hustler story, with plentiful photos of the strange erosion patterns which some maintain were caused by water. But this area has been a desert for thousands of years, except for a period after the last Ice Age ended in Europe. But that was almost 20,000 years ago. That's almost as long as the 26,000 years of a complete Equinox Precession. Hmm....

The New and Improved Star Hustler says to get yourself outside and observe the sky show that happens most nights. Besides, the price is right -- its all free! --kjw

Camp TJ Peace StarGazing: http://community.webshots.com/user/the511

Visit science sites at http://stardate.org , http://spaceweather.com , http://www.heavens-above.com/ , or http://cnn.com/ and get yourself smart too.

They also have links to charts and maps you can print out for other coming up comets, and meteor showers.

NEXT: Are there Galactic Assassins — extremely Xenophobic, super-powered and vicious — the reason why there seems to be no other space civilizations Out There, when all the statistics and logic says there must? And are we in their cross-hairs by foolishly hollaring out into space with our broadcasts, when we should be keeping a low profile so we won't suffer the same fate?

ALSO COMING UP:

— Cross Quarter Days like Groundhog Day slice up the calendar in the next "Tha Reasons For Tha Seasons;"

— Lunar based holidays such as the Lenten-based Mardi Gras and the connected Easter/Ishtar move to the front for the Spring's Vernal Equinox