Making a Splash in the Indian Ocean

A lunar eclipse occurs because the Moon is just a big rock in space, and space is dark. The only reason we can see the Moon is that there is a nearby star – the Sun – that is shining on it, lighting up one half of the rock. It’s the same with our planet,- the Earth – half of the planet is lit but the sun’s light (the daytime side), and half of the earth is dark (the nighttime side) because the sun can’t get to it.  Since the Moon orbits around our planet, sometimes we see the daytime side side of the Moon, and sometimes we see the nighttime side of the Moon, but most of the time we see some combination of the two. This is what causes the regular phases of the Moon, from New Moon to First Quarter to Full to Last Quarter.

A lunar eclipse occurs when something blocks the sunlight from being able to light up the Moon. There’s only one thing that can do that – our planet, the Earth. During a lunar eclipse, the Moon moves into the shadow that the Earth casts. As the Moon moves in its orbit, we can see the Earth’s curved shadow creep across the face of the Moon over the course of an hour or so, and finally covering it completely.

If the Earth was just a rock in space, the Moon would totally disappear during a lunar eclipse. Luckily for us, the Earth isn’t just rock, but also has an atmosphere – a layer of gasses like oxygen that surrounds the planet. Besides providing us air to breath, the atmosphere can often do interesting things with light. The atmosphere can make haloes around the Sun or the Moon, it can make rainbows when it’s full of water or mirages when it’s hot, and it can make sunrises and sunsets turn red.

If you live in most of North America, you can see the eclipse just by going outside at the right time and looking at the Moon. This link will let you choose your location and do all of the time zone conversions for you so you know what time the eclipse phases start and end for where you live. For this eclipse, the western half of North America sees the whole thing, with people farther east only seeing part of the eclipse before the Moon sets for them. Manitobans see essentially the entire interesting part before moonset occurs.

The only catch is that you need a clear sky without clouds to be able to see it. If it happens to be cloudy at your location, you can look for one of several live streams that will be going on from around the country. The Dome@Home team will be live-streaming the eclipse on the Manitoba Museum’s Facebook page and YouTube channel beginning about 2:30 am Central Time on November 8 (weather permitting). If our stream is clouded out, we’ll add links here to other events as we hear about them.

The lunar eclipse occurs after midnight on Monday night, November 7, 2022, in the morning hours of Tuesday, November 8, 2022. The event technically begins at 2:02 am Central time, but it lasts nearly six hours and not all parts are equally interesting. If you just want to catch the highlights and see the colour, watching for an hour between 3:45 am and 4:45 am Central should give you a good view. Of course, this may be affected by clouds, so make sure you check the weather forecast to make sure it will be clear when you plan to observe.

Technically the eclipse begins at 2:02 am Central Time on November 8, 2022, as the Moon enters the faint and fuzzy outer shadow of the Earth (called the penumbra). The penumbra doesn’t darken the moon much at first, but the shadow gets darker towards the middle and so you might not notice it until 2:30 am or so.

Beginning at 3:09 am Central time, the Moon starts to move into the dark central shadow of the Earth – the umbra. The umbra is dark enough that you can see it as a curved dark “bite” out of the left edge of the moon. Over the next hour, it will look like the shadow is moving over the Moon and covering more of it, but it’s actually the Moon moving into the shadow.

During the early partial phase, the umbra looks dark grey, but that’s because the lit-up part of the Moon right next to it dazzles the eyes. As the shadow covers more of the Moon, it will be easier to see that the umbra is actually a dark reddish colour.

At 4:17 am Central time, the Moon moves completely inside the umbra, and the eclipse is total. Now, with none of the Moon lit directly, the colour becomes much easier to see. The colour changes slowly as the Moon moves through the Earth’s shadow, and the right side will eventually brighten. The Moon begins to leave the umbra at 5:42 am Central time, with the left edge of the Moon emerging first. For southern Manitoba, the Moon sets at 7:44 am Central, just before fully emerging from the umbral shadow. Folks farther west will get to see the final penumbral stages of the eclipse, which last until 8:50 am Central (5:50 am Pacific).

To get the exact times of each stage of the eclipse in your local time zone, visit timeandate.com’s awesome eclipse page, here.

So, some basics first: a meteor is a glowing trail of light that shoots across the sky and disappears in the blink of an eye. Some are faint, while others can be so bright they light up the ground like the flash from a camera. They are caused by tiny pieces of dust floating out in space. When the dust hits the Earth, Earth’s upper atmosphere slows it down very quickly. At heights of 50km or more,  all of that speed energy gets turned into heat energy, and the piece of dust vaporizes. The excess heat causes the air around the dust to glow, and we see that glow from the ground as a meteor. (Some people call them “falling stars” or “shooting stars”, but they’re not related to stars at all.)

On any given night of the year, if you watched the sky for an hour continuously you’d see about half a dozen meteors on average. (They’re much more common than people think!) But on certain nights of the year, the Earth crashes through a cloud of dust – like an interplanetary dust bunny – and we see more meteors than usual. That’s a meteor shower.

These dust bunnies are left behind by comets that orbit the sun. A comet is a small body of ice and dust only a few kilometers across. There are millions of them, but most stay out at the fringes of the solar system and are invisible. When one gets nudged in towards the sun, it can warm up and melt, and the comet forms its characteristic tail. After the comet loops around the Sun it re-freezes, becoming invisible once again until its next return. The orbital path of the comet becomes very dusty from repeated passages of the comet. If the Earth’s orbit happens to intersect the comet’s orbit, we will hit that dusty patch at the same time every year.

Meteor activity from the Perseids actually begins around the end of July, but because the edges of the comet’s path aren’t as dusty as the middle, we don’t see very many Perseids until a few days before the peak. This year the peak occurs on the 12 of August, but there will be decent activity from the 10 through the 14 or so.

There’s a big, “BUT” on when the peak activity is for your location, though. Just because the earth is in the dustiest part of the comet’s path doesn’t mean you can see meteors then – it might be daytime for you, or you might be on the far side of the earth from the direction the earth is moving. So, the best time to watch is between about 3 am and 5 am on the mornings closest to the peak. Due to a variety of factors we won’t get into here, you’ll almost always see the most meteors from a single location in the pre-dawn hours.

Like most astronomical events, a meteor shower is best seen away from the lights of the city where you can get an unobstructed view of the stars. Unlike most astronomical events, no special equipment is required – the most complicated item you’ll need is a reclining lawn chair or a blanket.

First, watch the weather. Meteors happen above the clouds, so if it’s cloudy we can’t see them. You want a clear forecast in the critical 3 am to 5 am period.

Second, get out of the city. Street lights make it hard to see stars, and this is even more true for meteors which flash by in a second or two. You don’t have to go far, but even 15 minutes outside of the city in an area without any big streetlights will quadruple your meteor count at least.

Third, get comfy and be patient. Meteors can occur anywhere in the sky, so you want to watch as much sky as possible. A reclining lawn chair or blanket lets you fill your view with sky instead of ground. And watch the sky continuously. By the time someone says, “there’s one!” you have already missed it. Keep your eyes on the sky. Don’t use binoculars or a telescope, since those only show a part of the sky at once – you want the wide field of view provided by the factory-installed optical detectors you came with.

In the age of mobile devices, this advice is even more critical. It takes a good five minutes for your eyes to go from “daytime” mode to “night vision” mode, but it only takes a second of bright light to ruin your night vision and require another five minutes to switch back. every one second you look at your screen means you’ll miss at least 5 minutes’ worth of meteors.

You can take pictures of the sky with any camera, even the one in your mobile device – if you know how. The typical camera is designed for family pictures at the beach, not stars, so find out how to make your camera work well. Turn your flash off (it won’t help, and will ruin the night vision of everyone else around you), and set the camera for “night mode” or long exposure. There are also dedicated apps for taking star pictures you can find on your device’s app store. Point-and-shoot cameras often let you set the camera to “bulb” (manual) or take exposures up to 30 seconds. A DSLR or mirrorless camera will take amazing star pictures, but takes practice to use.

Point the camera at an area of sky, set it on the ground or use a tripod, and press the button. You’ll get a picture of the stars at least, and if you’re lucky, a meteor will happen in that part of the sky while you’re taking the picture. If not… just try again. And again. For every meteor image you see online, that photographer has hundreds of no-meteor images that still show the constellations, Milky Way, satellites, or Northern Lights. Still cool, even without the meteor.

If you get any good pictures this meteor shower, I’d love to see them! Send them to Space@ManitobaMuseum.ca and we’ll show the best ones on our Dome@Home show.