Tuesday seems to be a double-header for cosmic events: A total solar eclipse will shadow Indonesia and the North Pacific Ocean, and a 100-foot-wide (30 meter) asteroid will streak past Earth.
The total solar eclipse of March 2016 is the only total eclipse of the sun of the year. The last one occurred in March 2015 and this time around the moon's shadow will travel across the Earth late Tuesday (March 8), for the Pacific, and early Wednesday (March 9) in Indonesia. (Strangely, because of the international dateline, this actually happens in the opposite order — it starts off over Indonesia and travels eastward across the Pacific Ocean; it will be Tuesday for about the last third of its journey.) So while its timing is firm, you'll need to check a list to tell when exactly to look out for a full or partial eclipse. Remember, do not look directly at the sun with the naked eye or a telescope — you can use special eclipse-viewing glasses or build a pinhole projector. Solar Eclipses: An Observer's Guide (Infographic )
The asteroid's arrival is uncertain in a different way: researchers originally thought the asteroid flyby would be Saturday (March 5), but updated their predictionin late February. The asteroid should pass by about 3 million miles (5 million kilometers) from Earth, but there's a possibility it will approach as close as 15,000 miles (24,000 km), NASA officials said in a statement.
0 comments:
Post a Comment