Why look at the starry sky this Friday
Gather binoculars and telescopes in advance — the night of 27 to 28 July you must devote to astronomy. This combination of events in your lifetime will be gone in one day — the great opposition of Mars and the longest total lunar Eclipse in the XXI century.
Although by themselves the lunar Eclipse and opposition of Mars occur regularly, the coincidence of these astronomical phenomena in one day — a rare event, and here, and both events are in their own way exceptional. Worth it to go to sleep later.
Central lunar Eclipse
Lunar eclipses themselves are not very rare and occur whenever the Moon in its orbital motion gets into the shadow Land. A catalogue of the eclipses of the XXI century has 229 records, but only 85 of them eclipses — when the Moon is entirely immersed in earth’s shadow and takes on a characteristic red color. Full eclipses are usually a series every four years for three or four eclipses with six-month intervals. On July 27, just have the average of the three eclipses the current series (the first was on January 31 last held 21 January 2019).
However, full eclipses are not the same: the Moon can pass through the edge of earth’s shadow, or through its center. In the latter case, the Eclipse is called a Central, and, of course, its duration longer, and the Moon at the maximum phase darkens stronger. Of the 85 total eclipses of the XXI century Central is only 24. Past this was in 2011, and the next in Europe up to 2040. The current Eclipse is not only Central but at the apogee of the lunar orbit, where the velocity of the moon is minimal, and because the duration of totality will be a record for the XXI century — 103,5 minutes.
During the download an error has occurred.How to move the Moon through the Earth’s shadow on the night of 27 th to 28 th July
This same day, July 27 — the day of the great opposition of Mars. The opposition, or the opposition, the planet is this location when the Earth is between the sun and the planet.
News
longest lunar Eclipse in XXI century. What you need to know about it?
Confrontation is the best time of the observations, since the planet is visible for most of the night, its Shine to the maximum (it is easy to find in the sky), she turned to the daylight side, and, most importantly, the distance to it is minimal, so the telescope are distinguishable more detail.
Oppositions of Mars occur every 780 days, i.e. slightly less than once every two years. However, due to the elongation of the orbit of Mars, its distance from Sun varies from 207 to 249 million miles At opposition in aphelion (farthest from the Sun point of the orbit) between the Earth and Mars will be about 100 million miles But at perihelion (closest to the Sun point of the orbit) of the planet shares at least 58 million km, and Mars looks almost twice as big. Such great conflict happen only once in 15-17 years. The past was in 2003, and another has just on July 27.
We’ll see
The brilliance of Mars in a moment of great confrontation reaches and 2.8 m. That is, it becomes brighter than Jupiter (of-2.1 m), behind only Venus (-4,2 m). However, in the sky, Mars will be visible low that complicate observations in the Northern cities. In Moscow, for example, at about midnight Mars rises only 9°, and in St. Petersburg — 5°, and even smog from a light it will not be seen. In the southern cities of Mars will rise above — according to their latitude, say, to 19° in Astrakhan.