Watch out for a meteor outburst

Astronomers will be watching tomorrow for a possible outburst by a meteor shower. The alpha Aurigids are usually one of the year's minor displays. But short-lived, strong peaks of 30-40 were seen in 1935, 1986 and 1994. According to the Society for Popular Astronomy's Meteor Section, another strong return may occur on September 1. The meteors are bright yellow, so the presence of a gibbous moon should not be too much of a problem. Unfortunately for observers in the UK, eastern and central USA, any outburst is predicted to happen in daylight. Best places to view will be the western edge of the US and Hawaii. Observations during darkness will be valuable from other parts of the world too, however, to help astronomers measure activity. They are especially interested in the alpha Aurigids because, they come from debris left by a long-period comet with an orbital period of thousands of years. Comet Kiess was last observed in 1911, the first time it had rounded the Sun since around 82 BC. Tomorrow's meteors will be produced by rocky particles from the edge of the solar system - pieces of the comet's original crust, 4.5 billion years old. According to Sky & Telescope, the outburst could be annything between 20 and 300 meteors per hour. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Total eclipse favours the Pacific

The second total eclipse of the Moon of the year occurs this week - but few populated parts of the planet will be able to view the entire show. The Moon's passage through the Earth's dark shadow on Tuesday, 28 August, may be seen in full from the Pacific region stretching from the western half of the USA to the eastern side of Australia. The whole of both countries, plus most of Canada and Asia, will see much of the main event. New Zealand is excellently placed to witness the entire eclipse with the Moon at a decent altitude in the sky. Sadly for those of us on the other side of the world, no part of the eclipse will be visible from Europe. The attached illustration, courtesy of Sky & Telescope magazine, shows circumstances for different parts of the globe. More detailed timings can be found at the S&T website or at the site of Nasa's "Mr Eclipse", Fred Espenak. A Nasa team will be taking a special interest in the eclipse. They will watching for meteor impacts caused by comet debris falling from the direction of the Sun. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Will Google Sky kill stargazing?

A remarkable new tool for astronomers was launched with much fanfare today - a new feature within the Google Earth program that allows users to view and zoom in on the night sky. I cannot recall a space story causing quite as much excitement with a flurry of press releases appearing from the many different observatories and institutions that contributed to Google Sky. I've written in the news section of this site today about this program, including an overview of its main features and my initial impressions. But at the risk of sounding like a heretic, I got to wondering if this might be another nail in the coffin of amateur astronomy. Many of us around the word are being denied a decent view of the heavens thanks to light pollution. At the same time, it seems that more and more people are being tempted to migrate into a virtual world where friends are online and home is Second Life. How much more tempting will it be for people to switch to virtual astronomy? Why fumble around at a telescope in the dark and cold, looking for fuzzy objects you can barely see, when you could be scanning Google's sky in the warm, finding objects with ease, then zooming in to view them in the all the splendour and brilliance provided by Hubble's photo-enhancement team. As in the screenshot of the globular cluster M13 in Hercules, pictured above. OK, I am being somewhat controversial, even mischievous. But I would be very interested to hear what others think. Add a comment to let us all know! ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com