Saturday, August 3, 2013

Upcoming Events - Perseids, At Sea, LADEE

Hey Space Placers!

Greetings from Long Island, New York. I'm in the Big Apple for the weekend and I wanted to give you a heads up on upcoming BIG events so you can mark your calendar.

A week from now the annual Perseid Meteor Shower will be hitting our atmosphere in earnest and is predicted to give us quite a show. The Perseids are underway right now and will peak on the night of August 12-13. So figure out where you are going to be that night and scout out a nice location free of lights and trees. You will want a view of the whole sky if possible as meteors or shooting stars will be seen falling  everywhere.  BUT they will all trace back to the constellation of Perseus. The Perseids produce a number of fireballs - meteors brighter than Venus. From a dark sky site an observer could possibly see a 100 a year.

I will have more on the Perseids next week and will be on Fox 5 in D.C. as well.

On Friday, August 16, 2013, I will be getting underway on MS The Grandeur of the Seas from Baltimore to the Bahamas. I will be giving some astronomy and space exploration lectures on board and hope to stay in touch with you while at sea. I look forward to getting back to sea and under the stars.

Finally, I have been accredited with NASA to attend the September 6, 2013 night launch of NASA's latest mission to the Moon - Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). The launch will be from NASA's Wallops Island and will be the first planetary mission for Wallops. My plans are to video the Atlas V launch and post it for my readers.

And this is only what I know of.....

Sky Guy in VA




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