CFHT CLOUDCAM
JANUARY 4, 2011
QUADRANTIDS
TIME LAPSE - SUNSET TO SUNRISE 1-3 TO 1-4-2011
FANTASTIC QUADRANTIDS: This morning, Jan. 4th, Earth passed through a stream of debris from shattered comet 2003 EH1. The encounter produced a strong display of Quadrantid meteors over the Atlantic side of our planet, as many as 70 per hour according to the International Meteor Organization.
Venus, Jupiter, and Mars — three of our four closest planetary neighbors — adorn the evening sky as the new year breaks. Venus is the dazzling "evening star" in the west at sunset, with only slightly fainter Jupiter high in the south at the same hour. Orange Mars rises by around 11 p.m. as January opens, but about two hours earlier at month's end.
January 4, 2012
Sun and Earth are closest for the entire year today. Earth is at a point in its orbit called perihelion, which means "closest to the Sun." We are about 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) closer to the Sun than average.
January 5, 2012
The Moon stares into the face of the bull tonight — the V-shaped pattern of stars that outlines the face of Taurus. It is below the Moon as night falls. The brightest star in the V is Aldebaran, the bull's orange eye.
January 6, 2012
The expanding cloud of debris from an exploding star is to the lower right of the Moon this evening, and the Moon sits almost directly in front of it a couple of hours before sunrise. It is known as the Crab Nebula because its outline resembles a crab.
The 2012 Quadrantids, a little-known meteor shower named after an extinct constellation, will present an excellent chance for hardy souls to start the year off with some late-night meteor watching.
Peaking in the wee morning hours of Jan. 4, the Quadrantids have a maximum rate of about 100 per hour, varying between 60-200. The waxing gibbous moon will set around 3 a.m. local time, leaving about two hours of excellent meteor observing before dawn. It's a good thing, too, because unlike the more famous Perseid and Geminid meteor showers, the Quadrantids only last a few hours — it's the morning of Jan. 4, or nothing.
Like the Geminids, the Quadrantids originate from an asteroid, called 2003 EH1. Dynamical studies suggest that this body could very well be a piece of a comet which broke apart several centuries ago, and that the meteors you will see before dawn on Jan. 4 are the small debris from this fragmentation. After hundreds of years orbiting the sun, they will enter our atmosphere at 90,000 mph, burning up 50 miles above Earth's surface — a fiery end to a long journey!
The Quadrantids derive their name from the constellation of Quadrans Muralis (mural quadrant), which was created by the French astronomer Jerome Lalande in 1795. Located between the constellations of Bootes and Draco, Quadrans represents an early astronomical instrument used to observe and plot stars. Even though the constellation is no longer recognized by astronomers, it was around long enough to give the meteor shower — first seen in 1825 — its name.
Given the location of the radiant — northern tip of Bootes the Herdsman — only northern hemisphere observers will be able to see Quadrantids.
spaceweather.com
redorbit.com
stardate.org
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First Meteor Shower of 2012 to Peak Wednesdayby amithaonline6,942 views
At 0:19 Please reply that on the top right corner is a Galaxy
james65508 1 month ago