The Word NetPaper Science Series
Last Total Lunar Eclipse Of 2008
By the New and Improved Star Hustler
Skywatchers are going to have a busy time in the next couple of nights. There's a shoot-down scheduled of an errant spy satellite, and a lunar eclipse during a time when people are still up.
The space shuttle Atlantis just landed, and they skedaddled out of the way just in time. The Navy is going to shoot down a crippled satellite the size of a school bus with one or possible two missiles to keep it from crashing back to earth, I mean Terra. They also strongly advised trans-Pacific flights to avoid the large debris field area west of the Hawaiian Islands and partway to Japan.
Speaking of trans-pacific flights being downed by the Military Industrial Complex, I wonder if they can work this angle into the new season of "Lost" on ABC? They're throwing everything else in!
The thing never really worked as it failed shortly after launch, and is slowly working its way back to the bottom of the gravity well it came from. Aside from the fact that it has a ton of frozen poisonous hydrazine rocket fuel, there's some circuitry and stuff the government would rather other countries not see.
Real regular rocket fuel is kerosene. But for some special applications they sometimes use hydrazine, which is toxic as hell. There is the fear that it may survive a return descent since its sealed in a container and frozen.
Did you know that there are over a hundred spy satellites overhead the planet at any one time? The Hubble space telescope NASA uses actually is a refurbished KH-11 (code named "Keyhole") spy satellite, just pointed out instead of down. The new ones can read a newspaper over someone's shoulder, so They say.
As the military Industrial Complex gets new toys they give away their old hand-me-downs, such as the ArpaNet, renamed the Internet; and their old 24 satellite network that is the backbone of the Global Positioning system. They don't need that old stuff anymore.
Those GoogleEarth maps are from their old stuff. With it, you can see you and your neighbors' houses and yards if you punch in the addresses. Try it sometime. People have been genuinely freaked out. (And backyard sunbathers and amateur Nudists as well!) If you have an old computer and memory be advised the program takes a lot of visual and graphics memory, and will lock your system up good if you're running multiple applications.
LUNAR ECLIPSE — AGAIN
This has been a busy 18 months or so for Lunar eclipse watchers, and it had better hold us as the next one won't be for a couple of years. But there's a total Solar eclipse that some travelers might get a piece of this summer that we'll get around to talking about in a few months. Some people have booked cruises to watch it from the Ocean, southern Africa is a prime viewing spot and travel agencies are busy.
We have another Total Lunar eclipse this late Wednesday night. The Earths shadow starts to creep along the lunar disk at around 7:45 with Totality about 9-10, and finally ending about 11 pm. All times are Central Standard Time, or can be figured out on based on Universal Greenwich Time Hour 6, from their England observatory. Historically and scientifically for African Descended History Month, Midnite at Greenwich UT is labeled Zulu Time, in honour of their fierce African adversaries!
- LUNAR DISK ECLIPSE STARTS: 7:43 pm
- TOTALITY BEGINS: 9:01 pm
- DURATION: c. 50 mins, until 9:51 pm
- ECLIPSE ENDS: 11:09 pm
These are all Central Times by the way. Chicago, St Louis, Little Rock, and Houston are in the same time Zone. This is the best one to figure things out from, and I'm not just saying that because I live in Cudahy, an exurb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Astronomy, and Sky & Telescope magazines are based here, the bibles of backyard amateur astronomers and Stargazers.
Also, there are the temples/observatories of note, such as the world's biggest Old School refracting lens telescope in William's Bay, next to Lake Geneva. (It was featured in the movie "Chain Reaction" with Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman; Brian Cox, and Rachel Weisz about a breakthrough in Cold Fusion).
The University of Wisconsin has an Antarctic data link to a subterranean observatory where they've been watching for the spontaneous decay of a proton. Which theory says might not happen during the age of the Universe, or 50 million years, whatever is soonest.
But they're watching anyway because they're not going to take anybody's word about it, (these are Wisconsinites after all). And if seen and quantified it would answer some really Big Questions about the future of the cosmos. Talk about having a lifetime job! But I digress.
The eclipse, the last of the total lunar kind until late 2010, will be visible over almost all of North and South America, with a sliver of Alaskan peninsula during still daylight, so they may miss out. The cloudy weather has been pushed away, and that's the good news. The bad news is that its an Arctic front that's doing all the pushing.
Temperatures here tonight in Wisconsin are in the low negatives, like minus –10, with Wind Chills in the range of minus –20s. We can handle that, we're from here. Go see the maps on the Astro/Science links above and at the end of the article for more; that's how I get so smart!
The Earth's sunrises and sunsets played out on the surface turn the Selene/Luna/ the Moon a coppery reddish hue, with some ominous freakish looking black shadows sometimes.
This lunar eclipse will occur when there are plenty of people still up, and like other lunar eclipsi lasts a really long time because the earth's shadow is lots bigger and more spread out than the Moon's, which has no blurring atmosphere. Unlike Titan which is a gigantic moon of Saturn, that aside from having a substantial methane atmosphere is bigger than the planet Mercury. We have some plans for that place! They will be detailed in another Star Hustler article.
Here's the email send-out to we lucky subscribers of SpaceWeather.com:
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Space Weather News for Feb. 19, 2008
LUNAR ECLIPSE: On Wednesday night, February 20th, the full Moon will turn a delightful shade of red and possibly turquoise, too. It's a total lunar eclipse — the last one until Dec. 2010. Sky watchers in Europe, the Americas, parts of the Middle East and Africa are favored for good views of the two-hour event. Visit http://spaceweather.com for full coverage including maps and timetables, live webcasts and discussion.
SPY SATELLITE UPDATE:
The US Navy's first attempt to hit malfunctioning spy satellite USA 193 with a missile could come on Wednesday night during the lunar eclipse. This is based on an air traffic advisory warning pilots to steer clear of a patch of Pacific Ocean near Hawaii just when USA 193 is due to pass overhead.
Until the satellite is shot down, it remains visible to casual sky watchers during evening passes over US and Canadian towns and cities; experienced observers say the decaying satellite is sometimes as bright as the stars of Orion, making it an easy target for unaided eyes and off-the-shelf digital cameras. Details, photos and more information are available at http://spaceweather.com.
Subscribers to Spaceweather PHONE (http://spaceweatherphone.com) will receive email and telephone alerts when the spy-sat is about to appear over their backyards.
You are subscribed to the Space Weather mailing list, a free service of Spaceweather.com.
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That's it for the New & Improved Star Hustler. Next, we ask – and perhaps answer – in another Black History Month Special: – Were there Ancient African Explorers to the Americas?
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