Upcoming Meteor Shower and Lunar Eclipse

Hello everyone. Bet you were wondering where I wandered off to this time... Well, I managed to flirt with a cold this last week and decided to listen to my body instead of continuing to push myself. I spent the week sleeping and resting so that the cold developed into nothing more than a slightly stuffy nose and a continuous headache. When the sun went down and I got sleepy, I went to bed. It is amazing how much faster your body heals when you listen to it in the first place.

Anyway, enough about why I wasn't online very much last week. Tonight we have a really interesting event to discuss, the upcoming meteor shower and total lunar eclipse.

This week's meteor shower is expected to be the best to be seen in 2010. This will also be the only lunar eclipse for the year too. There is the returning meteor shower that comes around this time every year, the Geminid meteor shower. We should begin seeing the effects of this meteor shower tomorrow, December 13th. The "shooting stars" show should peak during the night hours between December 13th and December 14th. If you can manage to either stay awake until the wee hours of the morning, or have the desire to set your clock to get up in the pre-dawn hours, you should not be disappointed.

The best time to view the Geminid meteor shower is after midnight on December 13th when the earth is heading directly into the meteoroid stream. If you are unable to stay up that late or get up that early, you will still stand a good chance of seeing some pretty cool meteors earlier in the evening of December 13th. You will just have to be more patient when looking for the "shooting stars" earlier in the evening than if you watched after midnight. Since we are continuing to have some amazing weather in Arizona this week, those who live in Arizona should get a great view of the Geminids. I would also recommend getting a comfortable lounge chair so that you can sit outside and just gaze at the sky. I have stood and waited for the showers, and enjoyed the show, but ended up with a nasty crick in my neck the next day. Using a lounge chair or a reclining chair while star gazing makes for a much more comfortable viewing. The downside is that you don't want to get too comfortable, because you could then fall asleep while watching for the meteor shower.

These showers should be so bright that you will not need a telescope or binoculars to view the meteor shower. For those of you who may be new to watching a meteor shower, these "showers"' are caused by fragments of old comets entering our atmosphere as the earth passes through the trail of debris from the comet's orbit. If you are far in the desert, where there are no other sounds of civilization, there may even be the rare opportunity to hear the meteors if they come relatively close to your location.

The Geminid shower is unique because it it not really associated with a comet, but an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon.

Even more exciting than the return of the Geminid meteor shower is the full lunar eclipse that will occur the nights of December 20th (next Monday night) and December 21st in North America. For the Western Hemisphere, the eclipse is "officially" expected to begin on December 21st at 12:12 am EST (right after midnight...) This is expected to be the best lunar eclipse until April 2014. The last total lunar eclipse occurred on February 20th, 2008.

The entire lunar eclipse will be visible from all of North and South America. It is estimated that 1.5 billion people will have an opportunity to enjoy viewing this total lunar eclipse.

Remember to stay warm. You know I will be out there watching both the Geminids and the Total Lunar Eclipse. Enjoy.

Until tomorrow...