As nights get longer, stargazing still improves – Twin Cities

Observing the stars at this time of the year becomes much easier because the nights are now much longer than the days. Secondly, with the end of the daylight saving time last weekend, it is dark enough to admire the stars at 6 pm!

Despite all this, the best stars of the week are early in the morning, two to three hours before sunrise. Who wants to go to bed early and set the alarm for 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning? You will want this week's show to take place in the dawn skies, if the clouds do not bombard the sky. Prepare a big cup of coffee, get together, grab a garden chair and some blankets, and get ready to be dazzled. The show is even better in the darker countryside, but even if you have to compete with the lights of the city, it's worth getting up.

When you go out for the first time, sit on a lawn chair or lean against your car and let your eyes get used to the darkness. You can not help but be amazed by the beautiful stellar show that takes place in the southern skies early in the morning. Fantastic winter constellations invade this part of the sky. It's here that "Orion and his gang" meet up. Orion the hunter and his band of surrounding constellations – Bull the Bull, Gemini the Twins and others – are gradually moving from the sky from south to southwest as the twilight of the morning approaches. I do not get tired of seeing these great celestial characters. Even if it is not all winter, Orion and his group are considered winter constellations, because in January, as the Earth continues its orbit around the sun, these bright brilliants will be seen in the sky early evening. a glimpse of the great evening watching the stars.

To discover these constellations, download a good map of the stars of the evening of January. You can find a good one on skymaponline.net and get ready for the early evening in January. Be sure to use a red filter flashlight to view the map so you do not ruin your night vision. Of course, many star observation apps for smartphones are available. My favorite is "Sky Guide". On this app, you can turn on the red screen of your phone to maintain night vision.

While you admire the beauty of all the bright stars early in the morning, you will also see stars spinning through the celestial dome. These are not really stars, but meteors that mingle with our atmosphere. Later this week and especially this weekend, you will be forced to see more meteors than normal. This is because Leonid's annual meteor shower will reach its climax. The Leonids are not the best meteor shower of the year, but I would place them in the upper part. What makes them attractive this year is that there is no moonlight early in the morning, which makes the background much darker to catch these "shooting stars".

Annual meteor rains, such as leonids, occur when the Earth surrounding the sun gravitates into debris left by a comet. Comets are more or less "dirty snowballs" of rock and ice that revolve around the sun in highly elongated elongated orbits. When their orbits bring them closer to the sun, they partially melt, leaving a trail of debris consisting of tiny particles ranging from the size of the dust grains to small pebbles the size of small balls.

The comet that feeds the meteor shower Leonid called Tuttle Temple. The latter came from this part of the solar system in 1998 and will not return until 2031. The Earth in its solar orbit has crashed on this track since Tuttle Temple at 66 000 km / h and at the same time these particles or these balls of comet debris spin at thousands of kilometers per hour. This means that debris can enter our atmosphere at speeds above 150,000 mph!

With this type of velocity, the individual particles burn rapidly because of the high friction of the air, but the light we see is not due to combustion. It's impossible to see because these tiny particles burn between 50 and 150 miles high. The trail we see is the column of glowing air being chemically excited by the particle that tears it. Sometimes these streaks appear to be of different colors, indicating the type of atmospheric gas that is temporarily excited.

It is better to observe the meteor showers after midnight, because it is when you are on the side of the rotating Earth that sinks into the debris of the comet. It's like driving across the country on a hot summer's night. You get more bugs on your windshield than on your rear window. After midnight, we face the "windshield" of the moving Earth.

The meteor shower Leonid does not bear the name of Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. They are called Leonids because the meteors seem to emanate from the sky where the constellation Lion, the Lion, is placed. After midnight, Leo hangs in the east sky and looks like a question mark back. This does not mean that you should limit meteor hunting to this part of the sky. If you do, you will miss a lot, because the meteors can appear anywhere in the sky.

The best way to watch the Leonids, or any other meteor shower, is to lie on a deck chair with blankets a little after midnight, preferably after 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, rolling your eyes around the night sky. and see how many meteors you spot in a given time. It is a fun activity in a group or family.

Celestial shells