A Guide To Friday's Comet-Eclipse-Full-Moon Triple Feature

SonicSpike quotes a report from CNET: Even if you aren’t a space nerd whose idea of a good time is craning your neck to stare into the vast nothingness of space on a frigid evening, this Friday the heavens will put on a show worth heading outdoors for. A penumbral lunar eclipse, a full “snow moon” and a comet will be spicing up the night sky February 10 in a rare convergence of such celestial happenings. We’ll start with our nearest neighbor. February brings the full moon known as the “snow moon” because this month in North America tends to see a lot of the white fluffy stuff. This snow moon will be special though because, well… we’ll all get in its way in a sense when the penumbral lunar eclipse takes place Friday. The eclipse will be at least partly visible from most but not all places on Earth (sorry Australia and Japan). The moment of greatest eclipse is at 4:43 p.m. PT and the eclipse will then dissipate until it completes a little over two hours later, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. Next up, Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova has actually been visible with binoculars and telescopes for several weeks already, but it will be at its closest approach to Earth on the morning of February 11 as it passes by at a distance of 7.4 million miles (11.9 million kilometers) or 30 times further away than the moon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discuss&id=10228665&smallembed=1

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