#earthgrazer

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

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The year’s long-awaited Perseid meteor shower will be accompanied by a graceful planetary conjunction. It’s well worth staying up all night to watch.

The Perseid meteor shower, a celestial event eagerly awaited by millions of skywatchers around the world, is about to make its annual return to the night sky. The shower is predicted to reach its peak the morning of Monday, August 12th, but viewers should plan to start looking for meteors at nightfall on Sunday, August 11th. In a dark site away from light pollution, at the peak of the shower, observers might see one meteor per minute!

Light from the Moon, which will be just shy of first quarter, will somewhat affect viewing before midnight. “But as the Moon sets before midnight local time, the rest of the night is primed for perfect viewing circumstances,” says Diana Hannikainen, Sky & Telescope’s Observing Editor.

Begin watching for meteors soon after evening twilight ends on the evening of August 11th. By then the shower’s radiant — its perspective point of origin in the constellation Perseus — has risen above the northeastern horizon. The few Perseids that appear this early will be spectacularly long “earthgrazers” that skim along the top of the atmosphere. The higher the radiant, the more meteors you’ll see — so when Perseus climbs higher in the northeast, especially after midnight, more meteors should appear all over the sky.

Given the timing of the peak, you’ll have a second chance for observing on the evening of Monday, August 12th, and into the early morning of August 13th. In fact, the Perseids are a long-lived event, and you should see meteors — though fewer in number — for several nights before and after its predicted peak.

How to Watch

To enjoy the Perseids, you need no equipment but your eyes — binoculars and telescopes show too small an area of sky to be useful for meteor-watching. Find a dark spot away from bright lights with a wide-open view all around if possible.

You’ll want to make yourself comfortable to fully enjoy the show — craning your neck for many hours can ruin your experience. Bring a reclining lawn chair or picnic blanket so you can lie back. Bundle up in blankets or a sleeping bag, both for mosquito shielding and for warmth; clear nights can grow surprisingly chilly, even in August.

Once you’re comfortable, be patient and let your eyes adapt to the darkness. Give yourself at least 20 minutes before expecting to see multitudes of meteors. “And do resist looking at your phone during this time — or at any time during the night — because the harsh, bright light from the screen will wash away whatever dark adaptation you’ve built up,” says Hannikainen.

“Shooting stars” can appear anywhere and everywhere in the sky, so you don’t have to look toward the radiant to see them. The best direction to watch is wherever your sky is darkest, usually straight up. Faint Perseids appear as tiny, quick streaks. Occasional brighter ones might sail across the sky for several seconds and leave a brief train of glowing smoke.

When you see a meteor, trace its path back to its origin. If you eventually come to the constellation Perseus (see the accompanying sky chart), you’ve just witnessed a Perseid. Occasionally, you might spot an interloper. The weaker Delta Aquariid, Alpha Capricornid, and Kappa Cygnid showers are also active during Perseid season, and there are always a few random meteors too. All of these come from other parts of the sky. It’s a fun exercise to trace meteors back to their radiants: If the tracks don’t lead you to Perseus, they aren’t Perseids!

“The main thing that would hamper enjoyment of the spectacle would be clouds or light pollution,” Hannikainen cautions. Only the brightest meteors shine through light pollution (though usually not through clouds). But there’s good news for those in light-polluted areas: A NASA analysis of all-sky images taken from 2008 to 2013 shows that the Perseids deliver more bright meteors (those that outshine any star) than any other annual meteor shower.

How and Why

Meteors are caused by tiny, sandgrain- to pea-size bits of dusty debris striking the top of Earth’s atmosphere that burn up more than 50 miles (80 km) above the ground. The average Perseid zips in at 37 miles per second, glowing as it burns to soot and creating a quick, white-hot streak of superheated air. The nuggets in Grape Nuts cereal are a close match to the estimated size, color, and texture of typical meteor-shower particles.

The Perseid bits were shed long ago by Comet Swift-Tuttle and are distributed all along the comet’s orbital path around the Sun. Earth passes through this tenuous “river of rubble” every year in mid-August. The comet is so named because it was independently discovered by Lewis Swift and Horace Parnell Tuttle in July 1862.

Mars and Jupiter Meet in the Morning

The celestial spectacle doesn’t stop with the Perseids. In the early morning hours of Wednesday, August 14th, Jupiter and Mars will be really close on the sky — less than ½° apart. How close is that? Well, if you stretch your hand out to arm’s length, the apparent distance between the two planets would span less than half the width of your little finger. That’s close, and well worth staying up late or getting up early to see. (We should note, though, that even though the two will appear right next to each other on the sky, they’ll actually still be separated by more than 300 million miles, or 500 million km.)

The planets will still be very close in the mornings preceding and those following August 14th, so if you’re clouded out on the date of closest conjunction, it’s well worth the effort to catch this sight on one of the other mornings. The two planets will look slightly farther apart — a little more than twice the distance — on the morning of the peak of the Perseids. What better way to crown a night of meteor-watching than with the delightful sight of the conjunction of brilliant Jupiter and ruddy Mars!  

To take in this view, face east-northeast — that’s approximately in the direction where the Sun rises at this time of year at mid-northern latitudes. No equipment is required to enjoy this sight — in fact the unaided-eye view is the most pleasing, as the planetary duo nestles between the horns of Taurus, the celestial Bull, with the Pleiades star cluster not far to the upper right and orangey Aldebaran to their right. If you have a pair of binoculars lying around, pointing them at Jupiter will reveal the planet’s four largest moons.

No matter what sight you take in, between the Perseids and the planets there’ll be plenty to enjoy!

Read more on this year’s Perseids in the August 2024 issue of Sky & Telescope and on S&T's website.

[shutterwizard]

Earthgrazer Meteor - Puppid/Velids Meteor Shower

[kihaku2-blog]

Autumn Kings // Earth Radio // Earthgrazer at The Cubby Bear — 12/05/19. @cubbybearwrigley @autumnkingsband @earth_radio @earthgrazer_ #livemusic #livesound #productionmanager #monitorengineer #audio #audioengineer #autumnkings #autumnkingsband #earthradio #earthradioband #earthgrazer #sonya6000 (at Cubby Bear Wrigleyville) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5uQKNfFaKy/?igshid=15uehh6p3zebw

[whoisjaylamm]

The Sky Tonight Update: Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower

The Sky Tonight Update: Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower

The Eta Aquarids is an above average shower, capable of producing up to 60 meteors per hour at its peak. Most of the activity is seen in the Southern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, the rate can reach about 30 meteors per hour. It is produced by dust particles left behind by comet Halley, which has been observed since ancient times. The shower runs annually from April 19 to May 28. It…

[azurefishnets]

It's time yet again for the 3-Sentence Ficathon over on Dreamwidth; this year as always I vow to mangle the English concept of syntax in my efforts to wrestle my prose style into three sentences ONLY as I fill (and prompt!) various fandom prompts!

EDIT: Replaced the link at the top to THIS year's 3SF; sorry about that! The second prompt is actually from 2021-- I got all turned around...

Got some wistful-to-silly Disco Elysium-posting here: Any, Any, Wishing on a falling star FILLED with a little Kim wistfulness: As the light fades and the first stars come out, an earthgrazer streaks across the horizon; Kim looks out across the windswept, freezing waters of the bay as SadFM echoes around him and the thin grey crackle of the pale recedes for a moment (want to be free / it will last forever / eternally ) and, just for a moment, allows the orphaned child he's sublimated deep within to make a wish: Let there be a summer night, dark and quiet and deep and the stars coming out, with just me, the Kineema, a cigarette and... He stops the thought. There is no chance of eternity here, although this boat ride stretches on endlessly into the twilight; they'll finish the case on the islet ahead and, solved, both mark it on their ledgers and go back to the way they were (...but deep in there, that traitorous, wish-on-a-star child wishes there could be a miraculous blank slate for him as well in a new life; he quashes that thought just as firmly as the other and turns his eyes back to the pale grey depths of the water). and, in followup (and because I couldn't resist) Any, any, welcome to the desert of the real FILLED with Harry/Kim & one of those pesky Jamrock Giraffes "To the wasteland of reality," Harry rumbled as he tapped Kim's just-lit cigarette with his own yet-unlit one in something resembling a toast, and they both leaned back against the Kineema, parked under the wheeling stars of a late summer night in outer Jamrock. Kim's comment on this was interrupted as a long neck dipped before his startled gaze and delicate ungulate lips plucked his lit cigarette right out of his hand; the animal turned soulful eyes toward him as it chewed and swallowed the cigarette without compunction for the lit end, then swiveled hopefully toward Harry, already backing away, and he drily said instead, "Detective, I feel that perhaps a wasteland would be less full of roving wildlife," as he watched Harry make efforts to lure the pest away. That had been his one and only cigarette and so much for a quiet summer evening with the all too firm realities of Jamrock life all round them, but his ruminations and the ruminant were dispelled by a firm shooing and, evidently, a brief but successful internal struggle as Harry's face went through all its usual contortions before he handed Kim Harry's own, somehow-protected and pristine cigarette without further comment and settled back against the Kineema; Kim acknowledged (and thought Harry would likely agree) that a reality that was quite a bit more crowded than Kim had ever previously requested from his life was worth the occasional giraffe, although perhaps their next date should be in the only-slightly-more reputable confines of Kim's favorite pizza place instead...

[miyensays]

Earthgrazers (ChanBaek fanfiction by lotusk)

Reader-response

I have always deemed that a good story is something logical. Those stories that present questions reader would anticipate then packaged the answers in a literary and a captivating manner. More often than not, I would call unanswered questions ‘plot holes’ then label the story as something close to ineffective. But the universe, in all its powers, introduced me to a story where questions does not matter.

Inspired by Ruby Sparks, Earthgrazers refer to the meteor shower in which the whole story revolved. Baekhyun, a fictional character of Chanyeol (or that’s what he claimed Baekhyun to be), appeared out of nowhere after Chanyeol’s mutters of wishes to have his own Baekhyun in real life. After that meteor shower, the story begins to twist. Under normal circumstances, I would have asked for – or expected, an explanation as to why it happened. But no, it only strengthen the idea that the universe, indeed, is magical. And magic, sometimes, is the only thing we can comprehend.

The story set-up is endearing enough. However, even though the story is very magical, it was the characters which made it more real. The very character of Chanyeol and Baekhyun are very well established. Both writers and readers alike can feel and understand Chanyeol’s great drought in his writing career (and I hope readers could understand the struggles of fan fic writers for not updating stories according to the readers’ desired pace). Baekhyun, who seems to stick to his light power concept since Mama Era, guided Chanyeol’s way both in writing and in living. Moreover, the characters are not just characters who are in love but I see the things they symbolize. Metaphors. In real life, Chanyeol can be someone who is lost, unmotivated, and hopeless. Baekhyun, on the other hand, seems to be someone who gives others something to hold on to. It suffices to say that their characterization effectively captures relationships. And by relationship, I do not only mean romantic.

As the story progresses, I was unaware that I am sharing the same feelings with Chanyeol. Don’t ask, don’t halt, don’t stop just go for it. He did not ask the universe why or how or what, but instead, he focused on living. Living with Baekhyun. It forwards another notion that everything is not for us to understand and sometimes, you have to enjoy and live with what you have.

Also, I get to understand that no matter how powerful words are, as manifested in Chanyeol’s wishes coming true, there are also limitations a writer experiences. But I see this limitation as a strength. Chanyeol could have written things he would want about Baekhyun. But no, he gave Baekhyun the liberty to live. And had I been given the same chance – for a character of mine to come to life, I would have done the same thing. I will let him have his share of life. After all, life is a gift.

There are questions I want would want to ask, but I halted myself and ask rather, does it matter? I feel like questioning the rationality of the story would be questioning the powers of the universe to create such wonderful things people call magic. The story is light and tranquil, not the usual drama people always crave for. However, albeit light and tranquil, ‘Earthgrazers’ gives you so much to ponder about life and universe in general.

I see no plot holes…. Only magic.

[thechanbaeklibrary]

thanks for all your hard work!! i was wondering if you have any fics where chanbaek has to share a bed hehe 😭

anonymous asked: hi! ^_^ im looking for fics where chan and baek are forced to share a bed hehe. bonus points if they were previously enemies or best friends :) thanks for everything!!

Of Books and Road Trips

Here Be Dragons

watch it!

Say That You Still Love Me

Earthgrazers

did you hear that?

Thirsty

Go to Sleep

-admin jackie

[strugglesofseraasanexo-l]

“You want me to move here? Permanently?” Baekhyun asks, his voice soft and tentative. “Yes, permanently. I love that you love opera and that you love your betta. I love that you love singing and reading manhwa. I love that you make me leave the apartment for outdoor film festivals and walks along the beach and flamenco shows. I love watching how excited you get over outdoor film festivals and walks along the beach and flamenco shows.”

Earthgrazers, baeconandeggs

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

Tell us about meteor showers!!

HELL FUCKIN YEAH

so, right now the Perseids are happening because the Earth is passing through a debri field! this one is mostly dust from the comet Swift-Tuttle, there’s a really good simulation right here: https://www.meteorshowers.org/

if you can find Cassiopeia, a lovely W-shaped friend, you can find Perseus. We name meteor showers after the constellation they appear to originate from. If you draw a line back from the meteor, it should end in Perseus. If not, you’ve seen an erratic meteor (I see maybe six an hour while observing on a regular night? this is an negligible fraction of the hundred tons of space stuff that falls on the Earth every single day).

Getting a big blanket or a tarp and lying down is the most comfortable and will help you see the most amount of sky possible. 

generally, you’d be able to see about one a minute, since we aren’t passing through a denser part of the debri field this year. unfortunately, the moon will wash out a lot of the fainter ones, so it’ll be more like one big bright one every few minutes. 

most of the smaller fainter ones are dust/sand/speck of dirt sized, and the bright flash you’re seeing is the air compressing in front of it as it enters the atmosphere. the brighter ones you’re more likely to see are like driveway-gravel sized. you MAY catch a very bright one that leaves a faint smoke trail, an “earthgrazer”, which tend to be baseball-sized. 

[chicoterra]

Meteoro duplamente raro é visto cruzando o céu no sul do Brasil

Meteoro duplamente raro é visto cruzando o céu no sul do Brasil

Astro de origem interestalar, o 1º registrado no país, atingiu a atmosfera da Terra de raspão e provavelmente retornou ao espaço Sofia Pillagalo Um meteoro duplamente raro cruzou o céu do Rio Grande do Sul na noite do último domingo (30). Além de se tratar de um fenômeno conhecido como earthgrazer, o astro também é o primeiro meteoro de origem interestelar registrado pela da Bramon (Rede…

[614fics]

earthgrazers

author: lotusk rating: m tags: romance, domestic fluff, roommate!au, ruby sparks!au warnings: blowjobs, frottage other stuff/notes: i love ruby sparks so OF COURSE i would love this; everything about this is so sweet, cute, fluffy, i really love it as much as i love exodus :(; AND THEIR LIL HAND HOLDING!!! summary:

Romance novelist Park Chanyeol is having the worst writer’s block of his career. Frustrated, he tries writing on an old typewriter and for the first time in weeks, the words start to flow. The next morning, he wakes up to a naked stranger spooning him—a naked stranger who just happens to be the main protagonist of the novel he's writing.

AO3

[campplay]

Nadir rastlanan Earthgrazer ateş topu görüldü!

Nadir rastlanan Earthgrazer ateş topu görüldü!

Dünya atmosferine giren ve sonrasında tekrar çıkan bir meteor türü olarak bilinen Eartgrazer, en nadir görülen doğa olaylarından biri olarak kabul ediliyor. En son 2017’de rastlanan bu durum, kısa süre önce şans eseri yeniden görüntülendi. 9 Kasım 2021‘de gökyüzü gözlemcileri 3 eyalette 180 mil (yaklaşık 300 kilometre) yol kat eden meteor görüntülendi. NASA, Ay’a insan gönderme programını…

[azindy]

An ‘earthgrazer’ flew ‘a whopping 186 miles’ over 2 states — then vanished, NASA says:

[thechanbaeklibrary]

Hello, I want to find a fic where chanyeol is writer and baek is a character that fell from his book

hi! this is Earthgrazers! - admin shiba

[strugglesofseraasanexo-l]

“Ok. Here I go. I love that you love wearing my old t-shirts; it makes me feel things. I love that your hair smells of apples and that I get to go to sleep with you and wake up with you and oh God, Baekhyun, I just love you, okay? I love you and I want us to be together always. I honestly don’t believe that the universe would be so cruel as to give the world someone as magical as you, only to take you away. And even if the universe were that sadistic, I'll take and hoard every moment I can. So be with me, Byun Baekhyun. Live here with me. Always.”

Earthgrazers, baeconandeggs

[fuckyeahexofics]

hey! glad you're back! i was wondering if you knew of any author aus? any pairing is great! thank you!

180110

Between The Pages (Luhan/Kai, NC-17)Can’t fight these bad intentions (Baekhyun/Chanyeol, NC-17)come and get it (Lay/Baekhyun, NC-17)gravity is a tricky thing (it keeps me here with you) (Baekhyun/Kyungsoo, NC-17)The perfect words never crossed my mind (Kris/Suho)

-niki

a pen needs a page (Baekhyun/Kyungsoo, R)Between the lines (Baekhyun/Kyungsoo, NC-17)Earthgrazers (Baekhyun/Chanyeol, NC-17)Into Your World (Minseok/Kyungsoo, R)Le Soleil et la Lune (Baekhyun/Jongin, R)Meet Me In A Dream (Baekhyun/Kyungsoo, PG-15)Tell Me, What Is Real (Baekhyun/Jongin, R)

-ana

To touch a daydream (Baekhyun/Chanyeol, PG-15)when i look at you (Baekhyun/Chanyeol, PG-13)What Are Best Friends For? (Suho/Chen, NC-17)More Than Meets The Eye (Baekhyun/Chanyeol, PG-13)

-Ellen

update! Dedication(Chanyeol/Kai)

thank you @imtooindecisiveforthisshit for your help!