Skygazers: Brace yourselves for a kick in the Aquarids The annual Eta Aquarid meteor display will peak on the night of 5/6 May, with skygazers not suffering the traditional cloud and driving rain advised to keep an eye out for maximum burning dust from Halley's Comet at around 3-5 am on the 6th. The southern hemisphere should enjoy roughly 30 meteors per hour, with around 10 …
Presumably 'cos this is when it's darkest? Forecast is cloudy for the 6th here in sarf-west Lunnun. Will the 4th/5th be any good? Yikes, that's tonight.
* Get up early
* Clock meteorite loveliness
* Go for bike ride
* Big breakfast
* Catnap at work all day
Sounds like a plan.
Forecast is cloudy for the 6th here in sarf-west Lunnun
You are least likely to see anything because of light pollution. I have seen meteors in the south of England only when driving out on the M25 and/or one of the Ms to/form it. The moment you get anywhere inside the M25 you can no longer see them because of the glare from the lights all over the place.
Every time I see an announcement about a meteor shower I think, okay lets give it a go and invariably I wait up till 1am and go stand outside in the cold looking up at the sky (causing myself massive neck pain in the process) and occasionally see what I think might be a shooting star but could just have been a stray tear in my eye from the pain in my neck and having not blinked for the last 10 minutes. Then after an hour I say fuck this and go inside to warm up and get on with my life again. Next time I better see fire balls streaking across the sky every second or I am calling bullshit to this stuff.
The problems would be 1: accelerating said bull and 2: making it fly.
I'm sure SpaceX could help the first problem.... The second problem requires said bull to step outside the capsule and head towards earth.,,
I'm thinking a pig would be better as when that happens all sorts of prophecies will then be fulfilled.
The comet itself has an orbital period of between 75–76 years, and was last visible from Earth in 1986 as it passed through the inner solar system. Its next scheduled visit is in 2061
Can you imagine the palaver if it took a short-cut this time and turned up 20 years early...
"The steak reaches a top speed of Mach 6, and the outer surface may even get pleasantly seared. The inside, unfortunately, is still uncooked. Unless, that is, it goes into a hypersonic tumble and explodes into chunks."
I'll happily settle for chunks of pork. Some of it will be bacon!!!!
or just slept through it, you could try to observe the transit of Mercury on May 9 2016, 11:12-18:42 UTC.
Use binoculars or a small telescope to project the image of the Sun on a sheet of paper.Never look at the Sun directly.
Use binoculars or a small telescope to project the image of the Sun on a sheet of paper.Never look at the Sun directly.
Potentially easier is to use a mirror as a "pinhole":
http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/transit.htm
All you need is
A mirror - a compact makeup mirror should do...
Some way of masking off all but a small section - masking tape will do, the section can be square
Some way of holding it still
A darkish (close most of the curtains) room which faces north.
Eureka! 4:19 am EDT 05-May-16 A meteor just bisected a hole in the clouds as I happened to be looking. Traveling east to northwest (Aquarius radiant), kinda gold colored, with a short persistence ionization trail, 7 or 8 degrees long. Slower than I expected for an Aquarid. I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning. I might even get up early.
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