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The world has not witnessed a total lunar eclipse for two and a half years now. On April 15, 2014, the wait will be over. Observers throughout North and South America will see the event in its entirety; those in …
Mercury and Venus, whose orbits lie inside that of the Earth, usually pass north or south of the Sun at inferior conjunction (when the Earth and the planet are on the same side of the Sun). However, on rare occasions, …
On Monday, June 4, the full Moon lies directly opposite the Sun in the night sky and skims through the extreme northern tip of the Earth’s shadow. People across much of the Americas, the Pacific Ocean, Australia, and eastern Asia …
Mark your calendar for Sunday, May 20, 2012. The Moon will pass in front of the Sun but not completely block it, creating what scientists call an annular solar eclipse. This is the first solar eclipse of the year, and …
Eclipses are among the most awesome spectacles in nature, but somewhat rare occurrences simply due to the large number of factors that have to be just right in order for them to take place. On average, there is a total …
On New Year’s Day, 1801, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered a new “planet” between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It was much smaller and fainter than the other known planets, so it was called a minor planet or …
Beta Persei, better known as Algol, is the premier eclipsing binary star of the northern sky. This is because it can be observed with the unaided eye and it has a relatively short period of less than three days. You …
The Geminids – one of the year’s most prominent meteor showers – radiate from near Castor, the second brightest star in the constellation Gemini. Many seasoned meteor watchers believe the Geminid shower is better than the August Perseids, and for …
On October 24, 2007, a distant comet that was as faint as magnitude +18 has suddenly brightened by almost a million- fold, becoming an easy naked eye object even from light polluted cities. This is not the first outburst of …
All Full Moons draw attention to themselves by the way they reign supreme over the night, so that each one has acquired at least one special name. These names date back to the Native Americans in the eastern and northern …