Science
Stargazing calendar 2021: Eclipses, meteor showers and other astronomical events this year – OregonLive
Break out the telescope and stretch out your neck, because another year of stargazing is upon us.
Two lunar eclipses, a good summer meteor shower, and a close planetary conjunction highlight the stargazing calendar in 2021, which will otherwise be relatively quiet.
Lacking major events like the historic great conjunction at the end of 2020 or the upcoming total lunar eclipse of 2024, the astronomical calendar still has plenty to offer for amateur and experienced stargazers alike.
The big event in 2021 will be the supermoon total lunar eclipse, which will be visible above the Pacific Northwest in the early hours of May 26. The moon will not only appear larger in the sky, but will turn a shade of red as the Earth’s shadow passes over it.
It also promises to be a good year for the Perseid meteor shower in August, which will coincide with a new moon making skies dark enough to see a good show. The shower will peak on Aug. 12 and 13, a beautiful time of year in the Northwest.
And while there’s no great conjunction to look forward to this year, there will be a close conjunction of Mars and Venus on July 13, which is a great excuse to break out the telescope under clear summer skies.
Here’s what to look for when you look up at the night sky in 2021:
JAN. 2-3
Quadrantid Meteor Shower
The early winter meteor shower won’t offer much of a show to those in the Pacific Northwest. Aside from possible cloud cover, the waning gibbous moon during the meteor shower’s peak will make the meteors harder to see, which under dark skies would number about 25 per hour. It may be possible to see some closer to the shower’s end on Jan. 12.
APRIL 23-24
Lyrid Meteor Shower
Conditions won’t be optimal for the peak of this year’s Lyrids meteor shower, with a waxing gibbous moon hanging bright in the sky. The Lyrids are known for their fast and bright meteors, though typically they only number about 20 per hour. Some may be visible around the beginning of the meteor shower on April 14.
APRIL 27
Supermoon
A “supermoon” is a term used for a full moon that is near its closest approach to Earth, appearing larger and brighter than normal. The April supermoon will be the first of two in 2021 (a third on June 24 is also considered by some to be close enough to be deemed “super”).
MAY 6-7
Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower
Best viewed from the southern tropics, the Eta Aquarids usually produce 10 to 30 meteors per hour at their peak for those in the northern hemisphere. A crescent moon during the meteor shower’s peak this year will allow for darker skies.
The total lunar eclipse at 4:00 a.m., Oct. 8, 2014.Mike Zacchino/The Oregonian
MAY 26
Supermoon Total Lunar Eclipse
The marquee astronomical event of the year will be a total lunar eclipse that overlaps with the second “supermoon” of the year. Look for the full moon to turn red as the shadow of the Earth falls across it.
JUNE 10
Annular Solar Eclipse
This isn’t a total solar eclipse and it won’t be visible from the Pacific Northwest, but the annular solar eclipse – where a smaller moon blocks only part of the sun, creating a “ring of fire” effect – will be visible in the northeast U.S. and part of the Midwest.
JULY 13
Conjunction of Mars and Venus
Summertime stargazers will be able to fit both Mars and Venus into a single telescope view, as they appear close to one another during a conjunction of the two planets. With a thin crescent moon and clear summer skies, it should be a great occasion for stargazing in the Pacific Northwest.
JULY 28-29
Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower
Like the Eta Aquarids, the Delta Aquarids are best seen from the southern hemisphere, producing a minor shower in the north. A waning gibbous moon at their peak will likely drown out the scant meteors.
Alpha Capricornid Meteor Shower
Peaking the same two nights as the Delta Aquarids, the Alpha Capricornids will be another faint shower, thanks to the bright gibbous moon. Typically, this shower is known for its bright fireballs and is equally visible on both sides of the equator.
The Perseid meteor shower of 2016, seen from a canyon along the Deschutes River outside Maupin, Oregon.LC- Mark Graves
AUG. 12-13
Perseid Meteor Shower
One of the best meteor showers of the year, the Perseids promise to be a good show this year, with a new moon just a few days before the shower’s peak. Under dark skies, the Perseids usually number 50 to 75 per hour. Clear summer skies and warm temperatures make it a reliably good event.
AUG. 22
Blue Moon (seasonal)
We tend to think of a “blue moon” as the second full moon to occur within a single calendar month, but the term is also used for an extra full moon in a single season. Confusingly, it’s the third full moon in the season, not the extra fourth, that is considered the blue moon. This year the blue moon will come in the last third of summer.
OCT. 19-20
Orionid Meteor Shower
The Orionids typically produce 10 to 20 meteors per hour, though numbers can swell up to 75 in good years. This year doesn’t look promising, as a full moon will drown out most of the display.
NOV. 16-17
Leonid Meteor Shower
The Leonids are debris from the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, known for infrequent outbursts of activity, most recently in 2001. There won’t be any major Leonids events until 2099, and no good showers until around 2030, though the shower still produces peaks of around 15 meteors per hour. This year’s peak will be drowned out by a nearly full moon.
NOV. 19
Partial Lunar Eclipse
While not technically a total lunar eclipse, this partial eclipse will see Earth’s shadow covering a full 97% of the moon. The event will be visible for the entire U.S., reaching its maximum eclipse in the wee hours of the morning. The moon will be near its farthest point from Earth, so it will appear a bit smaller in the sky.
DEC. 13-14
Geminid Meteor Shower
The strongest meteor shower of the year comes on the final days of fall, with peaks of up to 120 meteors per hour. The Pacific Northwest is usually a poor place to look for Geminids due to reliably cloudy skies, and this year’s peak will be further hampered by a waxing gibbous moon. Stargazers who want to see the shower should head outside a few hours before dawn, or hope to get lucky in the early days of the shower, which will be active between Dec. 4 and 20.
DEC. 21-22
Ursid Meteor Shower
Overshadowed by the Geminids and the holiday season, the Ursids meteor shower rounds out the year with peak activity of around five to 10 meteors per hour, running from Dec. 17 to 26. Observers might be able to see the meteors in the late morning hours on the peak days of Dec. 21 and 22, though a nearly full moon might ruin your chances.
— Jamie Hale; jhale@oregonian.com; 503-294-4077; @HaleJamesB
Science
An extra moon may be orbiting Earth — and scientists think they know exactly where it came from – Livescience.com
A fast-spinning asteroid that orbits in time with Earth may be a wayward chunk of the moon. Now, scientists think they know exactly which lunar crater it came from.
A new study, published April 19 in the journal Nature Astronomy, finds that the near-Earth asteroid 469219 Kamo’oalewa may have been flung into space when a mile-wide (1.6 kilometers) space rock hit the moon, creating the Giordano Bruno crater.
Kamo’oalewa’s light reflectance matches that of weathered lunar rock, and its size, age and spin all match up with the 13.6-mile-wide (22 km) crater, which sits on the far side of the moon, the study researchers reported.
China plans to launch a sample-return mission to the asteroid in 2025. Called Tianwen-2, the mission will return pieces of Kamo’oalewa about 2.5 years later, according to Live Science’s sister site Space.com.
“The possibility of a lunar-derived origin adds unexpected intrigue to the [Tianwen-2] mission and presents additional technical challenges for the sample return,” Bin Cheng, a planetary scientist at Tsinghua University and a co-author of the new study, told Science.
Related: How many moons does Earth have?
Kamo’oalewa was discovered in 2016 by researchers at Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. It has a diameter of about 100 to 200 feet (approximately 30 to 60 meters, or about the size of a large Ferris wheel) and spins at a rapid clip of one rotation every 28 minutes. The asteroid orbits the sun in a similar path to Earth, sometimes approaching within 10 million miles (16 million km).
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Follow-up studies suggested that the light spectra reflected by Kamo’oalewa was very similar to the spectra reflected by samples brought back to Earth by lunar missions, as well as to meteorites known to come from the moon.
Cheng and his colleagues first calculated what size object and what speed of impact would be necessary to eject a fragment like Kamo’oalewa from the lunar surface, as well as what size crater would be left behind. They figured out that the asteroid could have resulted from a 45-degree impact at about 420,000 mph (18 kilometers per second) and would have left a 6-to-12-mile-wide (10 to 20 km) crater.
There are tens of thousands of craters that size on the moon, but most are ancient, the researchers wrote in their paper. Near-Earth asteroids usually last only about 10 million years, or at most up to 100 million years before they crash into the sun or a planet or get flung out of the solar system entirely. By looking at young craters, the team narrowed down the contenders to a few dozen options.
The researchers focused on Giordano Bruno, which matched the requirements for both size and age. They found that the impact that formed Giordano Bruno could have created as many as three still-extant Kamo’oalewa-like objects. This makes Giordano Bruno crater the most likely source of the asteroid, the researchers concluded.
“It’s like finding out which tree a fallen leaf on the ground came from in a vast forest,” Cheng wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Confirmation will come after the Tianwen-2 mission brings a piece of Kamo’oalewa back to Earth. Scientists already have a sample of what is believed to be ejecta from Giordano Bruno crater in the Luna 24 sample, a bit of moon rock brought back to Earth in a 1976 NASA mission. By comparing the two, researchers could verify Kamo’oalewa’s origin.
Editor’s note: This article’s headline was updated on April 23 at 10 a.m. ET.
<!–
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 was mankind’s first spacecraft to enter the interstellar medium
Washington, United States:
NASA’s Voyager 1 probe — the most distant man-made object in the universe — is returning usable information to ground control following months of spouting gibberish, the US space agency announced Monday.
The spaceship stopped sending readable data back to Earth on November 14, 2023, even though controllers could tell it was still receiving their commands.
In March, teams working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered that a single malfunctioning chip was to blame, and devised a clever coding fix that worked within the tight memory constraints of its 46-year-old computer system.
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“Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems,” the agency said.
Hi, it’s me. – V1 https://t.co/jgGFBfxIOe
— NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) April 22, 2024
“The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again.”
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 was mankind’s first spacecraft to enter the interstellar medium, in 2012, and is currently more than 15 billion miles from Earth. Messages sent from Earth take about 22.5 hours to reach the spacecraft.
Its twin, Voyager 2, also left the solar system in 2018.
Both Voyager spacecraft carry “Golden Records” — 12-inch, gold-plated copper disks intended to convey the story of our world to extraterrestrials.
These include a map of our solar system, a piece of uranium that serves as a radioactive clock allowing recipients to date the spaceship’s launch, and symbolic instructions that convey how to play the record.
The contents of the record, selected for NASA by a committee chaired by legendary astronomer Carl Sagan, include encoded images of life on Earth, as well as music and sounds that can be played using an included stylus.
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Their power banks are expected to be depleted sometime after 2025. They will then continue to wander the Milky Way, potentially for eternity, in silence.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Science
West Antarctica's ice sheet was smaller thousands of years ago – here's why this matters today – The Conversation
As the climate warms and Antarctica’s glaciers and ice sheets melt, the resulting rise in sea level has the potential to displace hundreds of millions of people around the world by the end of this century.
A key uncertainty in how much and how fast the seas will rise lies in whether currently “stable” parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet can become “unstable”.
One such region is West Antarctica’s Siple Coast, where rivers of ice flow off the continent and drain into the ocean.
Journal of Geophysical Research, CC BY-SA
This ice flow is slowed down by the Ross Ice Shelf, a floating mass of ice nearly the size of Spain, which holds back the land-based ice. Compared to other ice shelves in West Antarctica, the Ross Ice Shelf has little melting at its base because the ocean below it is very cold.
Although this region has been stable during the past few decades, recent research suggest this was not always the case. Radiocarbon dating of sediments from beneath the ice sheet tells us that it retreated hundreds of kilometres some 7,000 years ago, and then advanced again to its present position within the last 2,000 years.
Figuring out why this happened can help us better predict how the ice sheet will change in the future. In our new research, we test two main hypotheses.
Read more:
What an ocean hidden under Antarctic ice reveals about our planet’s future climate
Testing scenarios
Scientists have considered two possible explanations for this past ice sheet retreat and advance. The first is related to Earth’s crust below the ice sheet.
As an ice sheet shrinks, the change in ice mass causes the Earth’s crust to slowly uplift in response. At the same time, and counterintuitively, the sea level drops near the ice because of a weakening of the gravitational attraction between the ice sheet and the ocean water.
As the ice sheet thinned and retreated since the last ice age, crustal uplift and the fall in sea level in the region may have re-grounded floating ice, causing ice sheet advance.
AGU, CC BY-SA
The other hypothesis is that the ice sheet behaviour may be due to changes in the ocean. When the surface of the ocean freezes, forming sea ice, it expels salt into the water layers below. This cold briny water is heavier and mixes deep into the ocean, including under the Ross Ice Shelf. This blocks warm ocean currents from melting the ice.
AGU, CC BY-SA
Seafloor sediments and ice cores tell us that this deep mixing was weaker in the past when the ice sheet was retreating. This means that warm ocean currents may have flowed underneath the ice shelf and melted the ice. Mixing increased when the ice sheet was advancing.
We test these two ideas with computer model simulations of ice sheet flow and Earth’s crustal and sea surface responses to changes in the ice sheet with varying ocean temperature.
Because the rate of crustal uplift depends on the viscosity (stickiness) of the underlying mantle, we ran simulations within ranges estimated for West Antarctica. A stickier mantle means slower crustal uplift as the ice sheet thins.
The simulations that best matched geological records had a stickier mantle and a warmer ocean as the ice sheet retreated. In these simulations, the ice sheet retreats more quickly as the ocean warms.
When the ocean cools, the simulated ice sheet readvances to its present-day position. This means that changes in ocean temperature best explain the past ice sheet behaviour, but the rate of crustal uplift also affects how sensitive the ice sheet is to the ocean.
Veronika Meduna, CC BY-SA
What this means for climate policy today
Much attention has been paid to recent studies that show glacial melting may be irreversible in some parts of West Antarctica, such as the Amundsen Sea embayment.
In the context of such studies, policy debates hinge on whether we should focus on adapting to rising seas rather than cutting greenhouse gas emissions. If the ice sheet is already melting, are we too late for mitigation?
Our study suggests it is premature to give up on mitigation.
Global climate models run under high-emissions scenarios show less sea ice formation and deep ocean mixing. This could lead to the same cold-to-warm ocean switch that caused extensive ice sheet retreat thousands of years ago.
For West Antarctica’s Siple Coast, it is better if we prevent this ocean warming from occurring in the first place, which is still possible if we choose a low-emissions future.
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