More Signs and Wonders: April is going to be a busy month!


This month (April 2014) you can look forward to:

- Solar Eclipse
- Blood Moon Eclipse
- Meteor Shower
- Mars
- Vesta and Ceres, the two biggest space rocks in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter
 
April 13th

Vesta, which is about 326 miles (525 km) wide, reaches opposition on the morning of April 13. It will be an easy target in binoculars during the predawn hours and should even be visible with the naked eye, experts say.

April 14th 

Mars will be just 57 million miles (92 million kilometers) away from us.  During August 2003, Mars came within just 34.6 million miles (55.7 million km) of Earth — its closest pass to our planet in the past 60,000 years.

 
April 15th
 
The 592-mile-wide (952 km) Ceres will be directly opposite the sun in the sky on April 15, in the constellation Virgo. Though it's not as bright as Vesta, Ceres should be visible through binoculars, appearing as a point of light, like a star.

April 15th

The Blood Moon eclipse the first of the rare tetrad, when Earth's shadow will darken the moon in a total lunar eclipse and casting a red "blood-like" hue on its surface, visible throughout North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the Pacific region.  Totality will last from 3:07 a.m. until 4:25 a.m. EDT (0707-0825 GMT), while partial phases of the eclipse will be visible for a few hours before and after this stretch.
April 22nd
 
The Lyrid meteor shower will be best in the early morning hours as the Earth plows through the debris tail from the Comet Thatcher.  This occurs each year in April.

While not as spectacular as August's Perseids or December's Geminids, you can expect to see up to 20 bright meteors per hour after midnight.
 
April 29th
The solar eclipse will be next, though very few people will get to appreciate its full glory. The annular or "ring of fire" eclipse will be visible from a small patch of Antarctica, perhaps briefly confusing some penguins around the time of greatest eclipse, 2:04 a.m. EDT (0604 GMT).  But, Australia and southern Indonesia will get to see a partial solar eclipse.
 
tags: Solar eclipse, Blood Moon eclipse, meteor shower, Mars, Vesta, Ceres, signs and wonders
 



 

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