Our solar system is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old and is made of eight planets, more than 4,000 comets and countless other features, each with the potential of lighting up the night’s sky.
Advancements in astronomy mean many of the events are tracked, allowing scientists to determine years ahead of time when celestial bodies may be visible from Earth.
In 2024, the sky will be illuminated by 12 full Moons, plenty of meteor showers, five eclipses and four Supermoons.
Here’s a calendar with the best astronomical events you won’t want to miss through the year.
The annual meteor shower, which begins in late December, peaks in early January every year.
Some skygazers consider the meteor shower the best of the year because of the lack of moonlight, but the event’s peak only lasts a few hours each night.
NASA said that during the height of activity, dozens of meteors can be seen every hour if the skies are clear and there is minimal light pollution.
12th: Mercury visible before sunrise
The first planet in our solar system will reach its greatest elongation from the Sun in mid-January.
This event will result in great viewing of the planet, especially just before sunrise, when it is at the highest point in the sky.
Watch the eastern sky in order to capture a view of the rocky planet.
25th: Full Wolf Moon
The first full Moon of the year will rise in the east and peak at 12:54 p.m. EST, meaning the best viewing in North America will be Thursday evening after sunset.
According to the Farmers’ Almanac, the nickname originates from the time period when Native Americans noticed wolves howling in hunger at the Moon.
Other notable names for the lunar body include the Center Moon and the Cold Moon – all serve as reminders that the Northern Hemisphere is in the heart of winter.
Astronomical spring will begin on Tuesday, March 19, at 11:06 p.m. EDT.
During this event, the Sun’s rays will be directly over the equator, meaning places both north and south of the equator have nearly equal amounts of day and night.
The occurrence, also known as the vernal equinox, means the continuation of earlier sunrises and later sunsets in the Northern Hemisphere through June’s summer solstice.
25th: Full Worm Moon & lunar eclipse
The first full Moon of spring is known as the Worm Moon and will reach its peak around 3 a.m. ET.
At times, the Moon might seem dimmer than usual, and that’s because the celestial body is set to pass through Earth’s shadow, during what is known as a penumbral lunar eclipse.
Most of the world will be able to see the eclipse, but because the Moon is not passing directly between the Sun and the Earth, the effects are minimal when compared to an event such as a total lunar eclipse.
Astronomers said you’ll want to use binoculars or a telescope to fully appreciate the subtle change when the Moon passes through Earth’s shadow.
Since the full Moon will be the first after the spring equinox, it is also known as the paschal full Moon. It is used to determine the date of Easter, which occurs on the first Sunday after the lunar event. This year, the Easter holiday falls on March 31, 2024.
The Moon will completely block out the Sun on Monday, April 8, 2024, across large parts of Central and North America.
The solar eclipse will take place during the afternoon and will travel over Mexico, into Texas and across 14 other states before exiting through Canada. Totality will last less than 10 minutes, but that is not stopping communities from planning celebratory events.
Solar eclipses happen about twice a year, but finding yourself in one is considered rare. According to the American Astronomical Society, any given spot on the planet only sees temporary darkness from the Moon’s shadow once every 400 years.
The last total solar eclipse to travel across the Lower 48 occurred in 2017, and the next one won’t happen until 2045.
Astronomers remind everyone that it is never safe to look directly at the Sun without specialized eye protection.
Path of totality during the Great North American Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024.
21st-22nd: Lyrid meteor shower
Space debris from comet C/1861 G1 Thatcherm will be visible during the night of April 21st and the morning of April 22nd.
NASA said the comet was originally discovered by astronomer A.E. Thatcher in 1861 and since then has not completed an entire orbit around the Sun.
The comet is estimated to take about 415 years to complete a full orbit.
Usually, this meteor shower is one to stay up for, but due to the brightness created by the Moon, stargazing is expected to be negatively impacted.
23rd: Full Pink Moon
April’s full Moon usually coincides with the sprouting of the season’s first flowers.
The full Pink Moon will reach its peak illumination at 7:49 p.m. EDT and be the second full Moon of spring.
The Moon will not appear pink, even though the nickname suggests it.
Halley’s Comet usually produces one of the better meteor showers of the year to check out.
NASA said the Eta Aquarids usually lead to about 60 meteors per hour, but the best viewing is from the Southern Hemisphere.
The best viewing will be if the skies are clear, and you are well away from any light pollution.
The comet is thought to be at least 16,000 years old and also causes October’s Orionids meteor shower.
The American Meteor Society suggests that viewing of the event will be better than in recent years because the Moon’s interference will be minimal.
23rd: Full Flower Moon
The last full Moon of spring will peak in illumination at 9:53 a.m. ET, meaning residents in North America will either have to view the event on May 22nd or during the night of May 23rd.
The Farmers’ Almanac said the Moon gained its nickname through observations by Native Americans who noted flowers were in abundance during the late spring.
Other names for the lunar body include the Corn-Planting Moon and the Milk Moon.
The full Moon is the last of spring, as June will start the rotation of summer Moons.
Earth’s North Pole will reach its greatest tilt toward the sun on the summer solstice.
The Earth is tilted at approximately 23.5 degrees. Because of this tilt, most direct sunlight is aimed at the Northern Hemisphere during our summer.
The event marks the arrival of astronomical summer, not meteorological summer, which began on June 1.
The solstice officially arrives at 4:51 p.m. EDT and annually occurs sometime between June 20-22 during any given year.
Even though the Sun’s rays are the most direct, due to a lag time, it still takes about another month for the Northern Hemisphere to experience its warmest temperatures of the year.
An impact that is more instantaneous is the change in the amount of sunlight.
After June 20, daylight will start to decrease across the Northern Hemisphere and will do so through December’s winter solstice.
21st: Full Strawberry Moon
Just a day after astronomical summer begins, the full Moon will reach its peak at 9:07 p.m. EDT.
Since June 20 is also the longest day of the year, you might have to wait especially long for the Sun to set for a proper viewing.
June is the peak season for the strawberry and is the reason behind this full Moon’s nickname. Strawberries are typically planted after the last frost in the spring and are ready to be picked during summer.
The Strawberry Moon is only one of two full moons that have nicknames rooted in agriculture.
The planets Mercury, Mars and Uranus will all be visible in the night sky.
Mercury will be apparent just after sunset and should be fairly bright.
Both Mars and Uranus will appear close in the sky during what is known as a conjunction.
The best time to look out for the pair will be during the early morning before sunrise.
Even though the fourth and seventh planets will appear close, they’ll still be more than a billion miles from each other.
21st: Full Buck Moon
The Moon, nicknamed for a male deer, will peak during the morning hours in North America.
The Farmer’s Almanac said this full Moon is typically also called the full Thunder Moon or the Hay Moon.
Officially, the Moon will reach peak illumination at 6:17 a.m. EDT, so the best viewing will be either on the night before or after.
It is the last regular full Moon for several months, as the next four events will be Supermoons.
30th: Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower peak
If you see a meteor anytime from mid-July through the middle of August, it is likely part of the Delta Aquarids.
The meteor shower comes from the comets Marsden and Kracht and will be the first meteor shower to catch a glimpse of during the summer in North America.
NASA said that due to the approaching new Moon, viewing could allow upwards of 20 meteors per hour.
While looking for meteors, make sure to look for Mars and Jupiter. They are expected to appear close to the Moon and be visible through most of the night.
One of the more anticipated meteor showers of the year will become active in mid-July and last through mid-August.
The peak of activity is expected to be on the night of Aug. 12 and the morning of Aug. 13.
Debris left over by the Comet Swift-Tuttle is capable of producing up to 100 meteors per hour, making the Perseid meteor shower one of the best meteor showers of the year.
In North America, viewing can start as early as 10 p.m. and last through the pre-dawn hours.
NASA said fireballs, which are bright and large meteors, tend to be bountiful during the Perseids.
The eighth full Moon of the year will peak in brightness at 2:25 p.m. EDT, meaning North America will have to wait for several hours until the Sun sets and the Moon rises to see it in all its glory.
It is widely accepted that the event is known as the Sturgeon Moon because fish in the Great Lakes and other regions of North America are more easily caught before the summer winds down.
August’s full Moon is one of four Supermoons and will appear brighter and larger than the average Moon.
Supermoons occur a few times a year when the lunar body reaches what is known as perigee. Perigee is the closest point to Earth in the Moon’s orbit. It will be less than 230,000 miles away.
Due to the increased gravitational pull from Earth’s only natural satellite, higher-than-normal tides will be experienced. These are often called King Tides and can lead to nuisance flooding in coastal communities.
Trees are surrounded by the water from Biscayne Bay as seasonal king tides arrive along with a slow moving rain storm on November 15, 2023 in Miami, Florida.
In addition to being the full Sturgeon Moon and a Supermoon, it is also known as a seasonal Blue Moon.
A seasonal Blue Moon is the third full moon of an astronomical calendar that has four of these events.
The basis of the name appears to be rather murky, with no solid avenues to trace back to the term’s origin.
The Moon does not turn a hue of blue, and the occurrence of the Blue Moon is fairly common, which is the opposite of the expression “once in a blue moon,” which is used to signify a rarity.
The sixth planet of our solar system will be its brightest all year long as the Sun illuminates the planet.
The yellow-looking planet will be visible without the help of binoculars or a telescope, but if you wish to see its many rings, you’ll need some sort of aid.
According to NASA, the rings of the second-largest planet in our solar system are thought to be made up of rocky, ice space debris.
Some of the planet’s 83 moons could also be visible to stargazers who use a telescope.
10-28-80 Washington: Image of Saturn taken by the Voyager Spacecraft at a distance of 21.1 million miles. Color enhanced by NASA
17th: Harvest Moon
The second Supermoon of the year will peak in illumination about 10:34 p.m.
The event will happen just days before the autumnal equinox on Sept. 22.
The full Moon closest to the equinox earns the nickname of the full Harvest Moon.
Late September and October are typically some of the busiest months for farmers as crops are harvested before cold weather arrives.
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the Moon is sometimes referred to as the Corn Morn as Native Americans used the extra light to pick crops through the night.
18th: Partial lunar eclipse
The third eclipse of the year will be visible across a large part of the Western Hemisphere.
The event is set to begin just after 10 p.m. when the Moon passes through Earth’s shadow.
Similarly to the March event, binoculars or a telescope are suggested to detect the subtle change in the Moon’s appearance.
A lunar eclipse is not rare and is witnessed about two or three times a year.
The next lunar eclipse that will be visible from the U.S. will be in April 2025.
The Moon will pass through Earth’s shadow.
20th: Neptune’s closest approach to Earth
Earth will pass between the Sun and Neptune on Sept. 20, marking the closest distance between the two planets.
If skies are clear, the eighth planet will appear as a mere speck in the sky, so the use of a telescope is highly advised.
Even during its closest approach, the planet is some 2.7 billion miles away from Earth. In comparison, the Moon averages some 238,000 miles away from Earth and Mars is estimated to be about 140 million miles from Earth.
22nd: Fall equinox
Astronomical fall will begin on Sept. 22, 2024, at 8:43 a.m.
It is at his moment that Earth’s axis allows the Northern and Southern hemispheres to receive an equal amount of light.
The date also marks the halfway point between summer and winter.
The term equinox is derived from the Latin words aequus, which means equal, and nox, which is night.
Even at its closest point, it is estimated the space feature will be more than 43 million miles away.
“Comet C/2023 A3 is no threat to Earth,” said Peter Veres, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Veres pointed out that its interaction with the Sun prior to Earth’s flyby might even lead to the demise of the dusty, icy object.
“We don’t know for sure if it would survive its close approach to the Sun. And if it does, it may be either disappointing or surprising — if its cometary activity becomes hyperactive,” Veres stated.
Sightings of the comet could start as soon as the 12th and last for a week.
17th: Full Hunter’s Moon
The first full Moon of fall will reach peak illumination at 7:26 a.m. ET, meaning the best nights for viewing will be the evening hours of the 16th into the 17th or the night of the 17th into the 18th.
The Supermoon will also be the closest to Earth, making it appear to be a giant in the fall sky.
According to the Farmers’ Almanac, October was the time of the year when Native Americans began stocking up on food for the winter months.
A few days beyond its peak, the Orionid meteor shower is expected to reach its height.
Due to the close timing of these events, most of the meteors will be faint and not visible, courtesy of all the moonlight.
Some believe it originated because of traps put out by Native Americans to capture beavers. Others believe it comes from beavers building their winter dams before waterways freeze.
Similar to the Orionid meteor shower in October, November’s full Moon should impact the viewing of the Leonids.
All may not be lost when trying to catch a sight of November’s meteor shower. The peak is expected to occur during the night of the 17th and into the morning of the 18th, and the overall event is on an uptick in activity.
According to NASA, about every 33 years, the Leonids produce a meteor storm with at least 1,000 meteors per hour.
The last event occurred in 2002, so with each preceding meteor shower, the event should get more vivid until the peak.
Beaver moon rising behind Gran Sasso d’Italia picks is seen from L’Aquila, Italy, on November 7, 2022.
6th: Jupiter closest to Earth
The fifth planet of the solar system will be illuminated by the Sun and be visible for the entire night.
Jupiter will still be more than 370 million miles away from Earth, but it will appear as bright as many of the night’s stars.
The use of a telescope or binoculars should enable skygazers to see some of the planet’s 95 moons.
Between dusk and dawn, Venus, Mars and Neptune should also be visible at varying times.
14th: Geminid meteor shower
What is usually one of the better meteor showers of the year won’t be in 2024. As has been the case with several events this year, the peak of the meteor showers occurs close to when there is a full Moon, limiting the visibility.
Even though the peak occurs around the 14th, some of the meteors associated with the event could be possible during the week before or after.
The final astronomical sight to catch in the sky for the year will be the full Cold Moon.
If the skies are clear, the lunar body will reach full illumination at 4:02 a.m. EST.
The Moon’s nickname coincides with cold weather and winter’s arrival in the Northern Hemisphere.
The first full Moon of 2024 won’t grace the sky for another 29.6 days, which will be Jan. 13, 2025.
21st: Winter solstice
The Northern Hemisphere will officially enter astronomical winter at 4:19 a.m. ET on Dec. 21.
The date is also known to be the shortest day of the year, and starting on the 22nd, days will have more sunlight.
Increasing sunlight will continue to accumulate daily through June 20, 2025.
Similarly, as to what happens around the summer solstice, the winter solstice is not usually when the season’s most extreme temperatures impact the Northern Hemisphere.
There is what is known as a seasonal lag, and January and February usually produce the coldest weather of winter.
More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.
That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”
The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.
Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.
Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.
Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.
Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.
“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”
The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.
North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.
Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”
Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.
Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.
For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.
“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”
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It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.
On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.
They call it “Big Sam.”
The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed from a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
It didn’t die alone.
“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said in an interview on the way to the dig site.
She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as “the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.”
“This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grand Prairie area, so it’s found here and nowhere else in the world. They are … kind of about the size of an Indian elephant and a rhino,” she added.
The head alone, she said, is about the size of a baby elephant.
The discovery was a long time coming.
The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher out for a walk about 50 years ago. It took the teacher a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to come to take a look.
“At the time, sort of in the ’70s and ’80s, paleontology in northern Alberta was virtually unknown,” said Bamforth.
When paleontogists eventually got to the site, Bamforth said, they learned “it’s actually one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America.”
“It contains about 100 to 300 bones per square metre,” she said.
Paleontologists have been at the site sporadically ever since, combing through bones belonging to turtles, dinosaurs and lizards. Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.
About a year ago, they found the second adult: Big Sam.
Bamforth said both dinosaurs are believed to have been the elders in the herd.
“Their distinguishing feature is that, instead of having a horn on their nose like a triceratops, they had this big, bony bump called a boss. And they have big, bony bumps over their eyes as well,” she said.
“It makes them look a little strange. It’s the one dinosaur that if you find it, it’s the only possible thing it can be.”
The genders of the two adults are unknown.
Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.
The skull was found upside down, “as if the animal was lying on its back,” but was well preserved, she said.
She said the excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around if for stability. From there, it was lifted out — very carefully — with a crane, and was to be shipped on a trolley to the museum for study.
“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.
“It’s pretty exciting.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2024.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
