It’s a great week for skywatchers.
A meteor shower and lunar eclipse are on tap for this week.
The first celestial show will come overnight Wednesday, Nov. 17 into the early morning hours of Thursday, Nov. 18 with the Leonids meteor shower.
According to NASA, the Leonids, which peak during mid-November each year, are considered to be a major shower though meteor rates can be as low as 15 per hour. The Leonids - bright meteors that can be especially colorful – are some of the fastest meteors there are, traveling at speeds of 44 miles per second. The shower is also known for its fireballs and earthgrazer meteors, shooting stars that streak close to the horizon and are known for their long and colorful tails.
The pieces of space debris that interact with our atmosphere to create the Leonids originate from the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. It takes Tempel-Tuttle 33 years to orbit the sun once.
Best viewing times
The Leonids are best viewed at about midnight local time. To catch a glimpse, find an area well away from city or street lights and come prepared for winter temperatures. Orient yourself with your feet towards east, lie flat on your back, look up and take in as much of the sky as possible. In less than 30 minutes in the dark, your eyes will adapt and you will begin to see meteors.
NASA advises patience – the show will last until dawn so you will have plenty of time to catch a glimpse.
Partial lunar eclipse
Also set for this week is a partial lunar eclipse.
The moon will enter the Earth’s shadow to create a partial lunar eclipse on the evening of Nov. 18-19.
The lunar eclipse occurs when the sun, Earth and moon align to that the moon passes into the Earth’s shadow. In a total lunar eclipse, the entire moon falls within the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow, called the Umbra. In this eclipse, up to 99% of the moon’s disk will be within Earth’s umbra, NASA said.
The best viewing time will be right around the peak of the eclipse on Nov. 19 at 3:03 a.m. CT. This part of the eclipse will be visible in all of North America. In total, the partial lunar eclipse is expected to last just under 3 hours, 30 minutes, making it the longest partial eclipse in more than 580 years.
Why will the moon look red?
The same phenomenon that makes the sky blue and sunsets red causes the moon to turn red during a lunar eclipse, NASA said. The process is called Rayleigh Scattering and NASA explains it this way:
Light travels in waves, and different colors of light have different physical properties. Blue light has a shorter wavelength and is scattered more easily by particles in Earth’s atmosphere than red light, which has a longer wavelength. Red light, on the other hand, travels more directly through the atmosphere. When the Sun is overhead, we see blue light throughout the sky. But when the Sun is setting, sunlight must pass through more atmosphere and travel farther before reaching our eyes. The blue light from the sun scatters away, and longer-wavelength red, orange, and yellow light pass through.
During a lunar eclipse, the moon turns red because the only sunlight reaching the moon passes through the Earth’s atmosphere. The more dust or clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere during the eclipse, the redder the moon will appear.
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