Tonight in space: a lunar eclipse, rocket launch, and Mars gets close to Earth

[Buster's Uncle]

Tonight in space: a lunar eclipse, rocket launch, and Mars gets close to Earth
And you can watch it all online
The Verge
By Andrew Webster on April 14, 2014 10:29 am






From lunar eclipses to launching rockets, today is a busy day for space — and you can watch all of it from the comfort of your computer screen. Monday's festivities kick off with the third SpaceX resupply mission for the International Space Station (the first was back in 2012). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo craft is expected to launch at 4:58PM EDT from Cape Canaveral in Florida, with the Dragon carrying a total of 5,000 pounds of supplies for the ISS.

As part of the launch, for the first time the company will attempt to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 from the ocean as a secondary objective. While SpaceX says the chances of a successful recovery are only about 30-40 percent, it views it as a chance "to gather as much data as possible to support future testing." The event will be livestreamed directly by SpaceX.



(Image courtesy SpaceX)


Mars and Earth will be the closest they've been in seven years


A few hours after the rocket launches, you'll be able to get a close-up view of some impressive celestial sights. To start, tonight Mars and the Earth will be just 57 million miles apart. While that won't get you as close to the red planet as the Curiosity rover, it's the closest the two planets have been in seven years. If you live near clear skies, you should be able to see Mars once it gets dark. But later in the evening there's a perhaps more impressive sight — a total lunar eclipse. Expected to occur around 2AM EDT, the eclipse happens when the Moon passes behind the Earth, putting our planet in between the Moon and the Sun. It's a beautiful display, and NASA planetary scientist Renee Weber will be participating in a Reddit AMA this afternoon at 2PM EDT to answer any questions you might have about the event.

While both Mars and the eclipse will be viewable by many simply by looking at the night sky, there are other ways to watch if you can't make it out after dark. The Slooh community observatory will be streaming both events, starting with Mars at around 10PM EDT, with the eclipse following four hours later. NASA will also be streaming the eclipse, which you can check out directly here. It's expected to last three hours, with the peak occurring at around 3:45 in the morning.


http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/14/5612854/watch-spacex-rocket-mars-lunar-eclipse

[Buster's Uncle]

'Space Monday': Total lunar eclipse, rocket launch, brush with Mars
'The rim of the planet is on fire!'
Yahoo News
By Dylan Stableford, 3 hours ago



Attention stargazers! You're about to be treated to a series of space spectacles.

"Space Monday," as astronomers have dubbed it, kicks off in the late afternoon when SpaceX, the private spaceflight company, is planning a rocket launch. The Falcon 9, carrying its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, is set to lift off at 4:58 p.m. EDT from Florida's Cape Canaveral. The event is being webcast live by both NASA and SpaceX and streamed on Space.com.

After sunset, attention turns to Mars, which will pass within 57 million miles of Earth — its closest approach since January 2008, according to Space.com.

The sky show continues on April 15 at 1:58 a.m. EDT, when a full moon passes through Earth's amber shadow, producing a full lunar eclipse visible across North America.

The 78-minute total eclipse is the first in a tetrad, or a series of four consecutive total eclipses occurring at approximately six-month intervals. It will be followed by eclipses on Oct. 8, 2014, April 4, 2015, and Sept. 28, 2015 — all of them visible from all or part of the United States, NASA says.

Lunar eclipses occur, on average, about twice a year, but are rarely total. There are three types:

● A penumbral eclipse is when the moon passes through the pale outskirts of Earth's shadow. It's so subtle, sky watchers often don't notice an eclipse is underway.

 ● A partial eclipse is more dramatic. The moon dips into the core of Earth's shadow, but not all the way, so only a fraction of the moon is darkened.

 ● A total eclipse, when the entire moon is shadowed, is best of all. The face of the moon turns sunset red for up to an hour or more as the eclipse slowly unfolds.

According to astronomer and noted eclipse expert Fred Espenak, the moon "can take on a dramatically colorful appearance from bright orange to blood red."

Why blood red?

"Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky," Tony Phillips explains on NASA's Science News. "Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway. You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it's not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth's circumference, you're seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth's shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb."

According to Espenak, tetrads have become more frequent during the 21st century, the last coming in 2004 and the next slated for 2022-2023. Seven more are expected before 2100. Compare that with the 300-year period between 1600 to 1900, when there were no tetrads at all.

So how can you see the April 15 total lunar eclipse?

"One of the great things about lunar eclipses is that they are completely safe to view with the naked eye," Espenak writes on his website, MrEclipse.com. "No special filters are required to protect your eyes like those used for solar eclipses. You don't even need a telescope to watch the eclipse, although a good pair of binoculars will help."


http://news.yahoo.com/total-lunar-eclipse-moon-tetrad-163514251.html