4 ms·
The first 'major lunar standstill' in more than 18 years is about to occur
- w-ll 2y agoDoes anyone have a good calendar that shows interesting celestial events for say the next 10 years?
- rho138 2y agohttps://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SKYCAL/SKYCAL.html https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SKYCAL/SKYCAL.html This seems like the best resource that includes planets and meteor showers Some events aren’t really calculated for, e.g. some comets appear spur of the moment
- mangamadaiyan 2y agoWorse, dying stars seem to have a mind of their own when it comes to going Supernova.
- jimbobthrowawy 2y agoAt the very least there's enough neutrino detectors on earth that we should have some warning a while before we can see it happen. (neutrinos are less affected by gravity while travelling away from the exploding star so they'll reach us before the light does)
- Cyphase 2y agoThis is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperNova_Early_Warning_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperNova_Early_Warning_System > The SuperNova Early Warning System (SNEWS) is a network of neutrino detectors designed to give early warning to astronomers in the event of a supernova in the Milky Way, our home galaxy, or in a nearby galaxy such as the Large Magellanic Cloud or the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy.
- Cyphase 2y agoNot a supernova, but this nova is expected any day now, in the next few months: https://www.space.com/new-star-2024-T-Coronae-Borealis https://www.space.com/new-star-2024-T-Coronae-Borealis
- reaperducer 2y agoThe New York Times has a pretty good space-related events calendar feed. It's made in Google Calendar, but should work everywhere. (I use it on macOS Calendar.) https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/nytimes.com_89ai4ijpb733gt28rg21d2c2ek%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/nytimes.com_89ai4i...
- kristianp 2y agoWhy is it called a standstill? A lot of words in that article and not much information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_standstill#Origin_of_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_standstill#Origin_of_nam...
- kulahan 2y agotl;dr for the lazy (but I'm not very smart so don't trust me): the moon and earth orbit each other such that the moon cycles between rising high in the sky and low in the sky every ~2 weeks. Lunar Standstill is when our orbits align each other such that if you were to casually stargaze at the moon for a few nights in a row, it would seem to keep going to the same spot. Pretty cool imo, but I think you'd have to really be into the topic to appreciate it. It's pretty obscure knowledge!
- QuercusMax 2y agoSeems like you have to be a real moonhead to appreciate this event.
- hatthew 2y agoSo basically the moon's position follows a combination of several sine(ish) waves, and this is (close to) a global maxima of that combination? You and the article both say "high" which I would usually assume to mean "high altitude", but in this case it means "northerly azimuth"?
- vikingerik 2y agoYou're close, but it's not a few nights in a row, it's a few months in a row - the standstill is that it returns to the same angle above the horizon on each orbital pass (month), and thus to the same spot in the sky. (Night to night, the moon isn't in the same spot, because it's revolving along its ellipse to a different true anomaly position.)
- kulahan 2y agoThe event lasts months, but as I read, but if you compared the position over the course of more than a week, you’ll notice a difference in position. Sorry if I wasn’t clear!
- hgyjnbdet 2y agoWith this and the subs magnetic field shift on the front page, for the briefest of moments I wondered if they were somehow connected.
- mikemitchelldev 2y agoThis would make for a good js visualization challenge