#24F - Educational Eclipsing and Livestreams - Earth and Corona Forecasts - Can You Tell Mars From Saturn? - & 2 More Stories
TGT 4/1/24: Planets Vanishing; Two Planets match in brightness yet not close; Last Chances for Finding a Comet; The Sky During Totality; Southern Eclipse Survival Kit; Eclipse live-streams, Education.
Cover Photo - An Advance Peak at the Sun’s Corona
In This Issue:
Cover Photo — An Advance Peak at the Sun’s Corona
Welcome to Issue 24F!
Sky Planning Calendar —
* Moon-Gazing - Perigee gives us more phases, and a long totality if you are lucky…
* Observing—Plan-et - Planets are all sinking into twilight, but Mars and Saturn—close in brightness and separation; Solar Corona Prediction (Cover Story)
* Border Crossings - None. Zip. Nada. And we disagree….* Comet Pons-Brooks - Two evening (and one eclipse) chances to find it.
Towards Cosmic Awareness (our new public astronomy education column) - Four educational projects you can do with an eclipse; Eclipse Live Stream links.
Astronomy in Everyday Life - How Southerners Deal With Solar Eclipses….
Welcome to The Galactic Times Newsletter-Inbox Magazine #24F!
Do you understand Kepler’s Laws? Especially how the Moon would go around us faster when it is near Perigee, the closest part of its elliptical orbit around Earth? In the middle of this 15-day period, the Moon reaches Perigee and not only is it closest but it is also its largest size in the sky for perfect timing to cover up the Sun (but you already knew that, right?). It ALSO is moving fastest across the sky and thus we have the rare issue for The Galactic Times where we have three Moon phases during this time—Last Quarter, New Moon, First Quarter.
Eclipses are awesome. Learning while enjoying them is even better. Looking for something useful to do? Monitor you environment, or radio signals, the Moon’s ragged edge, and more with NASA eclipse-related citizen science projects. Plus—if you can’t get to the totality path…or you get clouded out…where online can you watch the eclipse? We have all that information for you.
Say good-bye to planets. Not only are we about to lose Jupiter into the evening twilight glow, but we essentially lose just about all the others. Yes, Mars and Saturn are getting slightly easier to find in the dawn, they are still hard. But on the 10th or 11th, depending on where you are, the two are only 1/2-degree apart but essentially identical in brightness. Only color and Mars’ more rapid motion will tell the two apart. Can you do that?
A couple of last, fading chances for Northern Hemispherians to catch Comet Pons-Brooks might make you feel better, though.
Enjoy!
Publisher — Dr. Larry Krumenaker Email: newsletter@thegalactictimes.com
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Sky Planning Calendar
Moon-Gazing
Moon passages by a star, planet or deep sky object are a good way to find a planet or other object if you’ve never located it before.
April 1 Last Quarter Moon, just before midnight, officially. It is passing the red giant star Antares.
April 6 Mars is 2-degrees north of the Moon. Later, Saturn is 1.2-degrees north of the Moon. You think they are close in the sky? Getting there….
April 7 It is Perigee day, the Moon is as big as it can get in angular dimensions. The Moon will also occult (cover up) Venus around noon, but Venus is SO close to the Sun now that even with binoculars this will be a challenge. Especially being one day from New Moon. You can try for it, if you are in SE North America or Polynesia.
April 8 New Moon, and the most awesome “occultation” there is, the Great North American total eclipse of the Sun. Below is the sky you would see in that afternoon (well, not that darkly, minus a solar corona, and you might see Comet Pons--Brooks to the right and below somewhere) but the planets are correct!
April 10 In the early evening, Jupiter is 4-degrees south of the 1.5-day old Moon….
April 11 …and then the Moon passes less than its own diameter by the Pleaides star cluster, in the dawn. The 10-11th is a good night for Moon passages!
April 15 First Quarter Moon
Observing---Plan-et
==A Nearly Planet-less Sky; Try for a Dawn Meeting between Mars and Saturn==
Sun: TGT doesn’t normally include the Sun in this column but it deserves it this time. First of all it gets a total eclipse treatment on April 8th. But it then gives us a good view of all the bright planets and maybe, if you are lucky, Comet Pons-Brooks during the 0-4 minutes of totality, if you are lucky to be in the Moon’s shadow. Here’s approximately what you will see (minus the comet, which will be above the Sun in this other worldly afternoon, and closing in on Jupiter):
According to Forbes, the Sun during totality will likely have “a giant ‘streamer’ —a large structure in the corona—shooting out at the 10 o'clock position on the sun. It may be accompanied by a two huge looping prominence—bright pinkish-red towers of plasma—at both 4 o'clock and 11 o'clock.” See our Cover Photo above for a visual prediction.
And if you get the good fortune to be in the Moon’s shadow under clear skies, SEND US PHOTOS!!!
Will the Eclipse be Eclipsed?
To help you with your travel plans (hopes?), The Galactic Times subscriber Rich Stillman sent this:
“This site has all the available weather models. Some report cloud cover, others don't. Some look further into the future than others, and some will give more local predictions than others. When I copied this URL it pointed to the eclipse time in the northeast, but it uses an offset time (now plus fh hours) so when you look at it the time will be different and you can adjust to the time you want.
https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php?m=gfs&p=cloudcover&rh=2024033112&fh=198&r=conus&dpdt=&mc=
If you want a not-so-quick tutorial you can find one here:”
Since I am in the 80+% partial eclipse zone, I’m looking to see if the weather will cooperate at the nearest place for totality for me, just northwest of Memphis. I found this site, updated daily, on the expected cloud cover for April 8th:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/science/solar-eclipse-cloud-cover-forecast-map.html
Hmmm, doesn’t look good…..
Mercury is on the way out of the evening sky after a really good apparition. But by the 6th it sets 45 minutes after Sunset—the bare minumum to find it without binoculars, and disappearing quickly, reaching solar conjunction on the 11th.
Venus is essentially gone.
Mars remains low, uninteresting, and dim in the morning twilight. But Mars and Saturn give observers a neat challenge on the 10th (US Central Time, 11th eastward otherwise). On this day in the dawn they are 1/2-degree apart, and even more interesting, they are essentially the same brightness, about magnitude +1.1. Can you see if your eyes can pick them out by color? Or if you have any unusual color issues with your eyes?
By mid-month, Mars rises about 80 minutes before the Sun, just barely later than the start of twilight.
Jupiter is the last planet ‘standing’ in the dark evening sky, but not for long. At mid-month it sets just about 1/2 hour after evening twilight ends.
Saturn is slowly crawling upwards out of the twilight glow. See if you can find it by Mars in the dawn on the 10th.
Comet Pons-Brooks
Not too easy but with binoculars you just might get this traveling iceberg in the sky before it, um, melts away (okay, okay, sublimates…). On the 9th you’ll find is 6-degrees above the evening crescent Moon. Four days later, on the 13th it will be 3-degrees (six Full Moon diameters) below Jupiter, still barely visible in a dark sky.
Border Crossings
No changes from two weeks ago. The Sun is comfortably inside Pisces the Fishes, but the horologists say it is in Aries. So the two groups totally disagree through the rest of the month.
Towards Cosmic Awareness
Just viewing a total eclipse is awesome. Learning something from it is even better. Here are four educational things you can do with the April 8th eclipse:
How an eclipse affects solar power.
GLOBE Eclipse Challenge: Clouds and Our Solar-Powered EarthSo what happens on Earth when the Sun is blocked during an eclipse? How cold will it get in the Moon’s shadow? What will happen to the clouds? Will the temperature change? Will winds shift? To answer these questions, The GLOBE Program invites you to participate in the natural experiment provided by April 8’s total solar eclipse by recording changes in cloud conditions and in temperature everywhere (both inside and outside the eclipse path).
To participate in GLOBE Eclipse:
Download the free GLOBE Observer app and register with an active email address.
Get an air temperature thermometer so you are ready to record the temperature during the eclipse.
Begin observing clouds now (before eclipse day) so that you are comfortable with the process. To get ready, we encourage you to participate in the GLOBE Eclipse Challenge: Clouds and Our Solar-Powered Earth, March 15-April 15. During the challenge, you will record cloud conditions at varying times during the day.
On April 8, tap on “Eclipse” in the GLOBE Observer app and start recording your temperature and sky conditions before, during, and after the eclipse. You will measure temperature every 5-10 minutes and clouds every 15-30 minutes or whenever you see change. You can explore the Eclipse protocol in the app without entering data (practice mode) starting in mid-March. You can start entering actual temperature data the week before the eclipse.
Yours truly wants to remind you, especially if you are a teacher with sensors, such as PASCO’s or Vernier’s, about an experiment he and a group of teachers did at the annular eclipse in Nevada years ago. The article on that is in the Eclipse Links PDF on The Galactic Times front page top menu. In brief, we monitored temperature and sky color as well as light intensity. As we expected, things got darker and cooler, but the sky color surprisingly didn’t change.
2. We all have cell phones now. Here a Citizen Science adventure you and your kids can do with them….
Sketch the Shape of the Sun for Science During the Solar Eclipse
The SunSketcher team is looking for one million volunteers to capture photos on their cell phones during the April 8 total solar eclipse. These images will help scientists learn about the size, shape, and inner structure of the Sun.
This NASA-funded citizen science project invites anyone who will be within the path of totality in the U.S. to take photos of the Baily’s Beads effect, which occurs when little points of sunlight pass through the valleys in between the mountains on the edge of the Moon. It’s the last piece of the Sun seen before totality and the first to appear after totality. For a few seconds, these glimmers of light look like beads along the Moon’s edge.
Two More NASA Citizen Science Projects, Eclipse Division:
Eclipse Soundscapes will compare data from a 1932 study on how eclipses affect wildlife – in this case, crickets. There are a number of ways you can participate, both on and off the path. NOTE: you must be 13 and older to submit data. Participants 18+ can apply to receive the free Data Collector kit. Learn more at: eclipsesoundscapes.org/
HamSCI
HamSCI stands for Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation. HamSCI has been actively engaged in scientific data collection for both the October 14, 2023, annular solar eclipse and the upcoming April 8, 2024, total eclipse. Two major activities that HamSCI will be involved in around the solar events will be the Solar Eclipse QSO Party (SEQP) and the Gladstone Signal Spotting Challenge (GSSC) which are part of the HamSCI Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science. Learn more about these experiments and others at: hamsci.org/eclipse
Can’t get to the totality path? Are you clouded out if you are there? Still want to do something fun and interesting? Try doing something with a live stream.
Here are some links to livestreaming of the total eclipse from various websites:
NASA+ https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-video/2024-total-solar-eclipse-through-the-eyes-of-nasa/
YouTube https://youtube.com/live/2MJY_ptQW1o?feature=share
Facebook https://fb.me/e/1x3TDY9Kb
Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/nasa/schedule?segmentID=ed6a3463-f156-4d93-82d5-47104a4ff9db
Exploratorium https://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse
Space.com https://www.space.com/watch-total-solar-eclipse-april-8-online-free-livestreams
Time and Date https://www.timeanddate.com/live/
Watch from Vermont! https://www.mainepublic.org/2024-03-29/livestream-video-vermont-solar-eclipse
And a master list if these don’t suit you…. American Astronomical Society https://eclipse.aas.org/resources/livestreams
Keep all these handy since they aren’t all the same NASA feed, and are based in different parts of the shadow path. Your first choice could be clouded out….
Astronomy in Everyday Life
How Southerners Handle Total Eclipses….
Good luck….
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