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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Comet Thatcher & Moon

METEOR ALERT: Earth is about to skirt the dusty tail of Comet Thatcher, and this will cause the annual Lyrid meteor shower. Forecasters expect 5 to 15 meteors per hour--modest, but pretty. The best time to look is during the hours before dawn on Saturday morning, April 22nd: full story.

The Moon will also encounter the comet's tail on April 22nd, which raises an interesting possibility: Amateur astronomers may be able to see flashes of light on the Moon when comet debris hits the lunar surface and explodes. All that's required is a backyard telescope and patience.

Want to try? Train your telescope on the dark side of the Moon; Lyrids will be raining down on the northern third of the visible disk. Watch for point-like flashes. They are fleeting and easy to miss. Better yet, let a video camera do the work for you.

*All that from today's spaceweather.com (site archives its homepage daily, though some articles remain at homepage for a few days)...

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)