With a strong telescope, people can witness a lot of activity in the sky this month
Nasa is warning a "Stadium sized asteroid" will make a close pass Tuesday night. “This particular one is of no consequence to us,” Randy Groundwater, past president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Windsor Centre, assured. “It won't affect anything but it's interesting just to note their passage.”
The "near-Earth object," otherwise known as a NEO, won't be any closer than a million kilometres from the planet with no probability of entering the atmosphere.
Later this month, on Sept. 29, a second asteroid is expected to be sucked in by the earth’s gravity. Considered a rarity, this visitor is only about 30 feet wide.
“It's not the sort of thing you can go out and look up in the sky and say, oh, there's the asteroid. They're not bright enough to do that. They're small. They do not reflect a lot of light,” Groundwater said.
In both cases, he feels you'd need a good-sized telescope to be able to see the asteroids.
However, stargazers won't have a hard time seeing a rarity in the night sky this Tuesday night, a harvest super moon.
“The full moon is rising and if you have a clear view on the eastern horizon, you'll get to see that orange ball that looks a little bit like a pumpkin coming over the horizon around 7:35 [Tuesday night],” said Tom Sobocan, a member of the astronomical society. “The earth will also pass between the sun and moon causing a lunar eclipse.”
He expects the partial eclipse to start at around 8:45 p.m. and hit a peak between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m..
“There's about an hour period there, roughly quarter after ten to quarter after 11, with a maximum umbral eclipse at about 10:45,” said Sobocan, who points out Tuesday night's activity is a primer for 2025. “This lunar eclipse, is going to whet your appetite for two total lunar eclipses that will take place in March and September of 2025.”
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