![]() Be forewarned, however: The comet will be moving in the sky, and visible only as a fuzzy green patch without a tail. This sky chart shows the position of Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova early Saturday morning. There’s also a super-sparkly Venus visible high in the southwest, with a butterscotch Mars to its upper left. (Whoever came up with this definitely didn’t live in Seattle.) After that, we’ll be looking at the typical full moon for February.Įach month’s full moon has a nickname, and this one is called the “Snow Moon” because its glow is supposed to brighten up fields of snow. ![]() The penumbral shadow fades out of visibility by 6:15 p.m. “You can even use this event to check the acuteness of your visual perception,” Kelly Beatty, Sky & Telescope’s senior editor, notes in an eclipse preview. The farther you are from urban haze, the better the viewing conditions will be. But assuming the skies are clear, you should still be able to make out the faint darkening of the moon’s edge that’s caused by Earth’s shadow. By then, the penumbral lunar eclipse will be past its peak (which comes at 4:44 p.m. The Friday night forecast for the Seattle area calls for partly cloudy skies with a 20 percent chance of rain.ĭespite Seattle’s odds, it’s worth watching for moonrise around 5:30 p.m. You may miss them anyway, depending on the sky conditions. But unless you know what’s coming, you’re almost certain to miss them. Tonight’s the night when a lunar eclipse dims the full moon, and when a recently discovered green comet comes closest to our planet. (Hong Kong Space Museum Photo via Sky & Telescope) A penumbral lunar eclipse not quite as deep as the one we’re about to see occurred over the Far East in November 2012.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |