Archive
01/04/11 – Ephemeris – Solar eclipse for the Old World today
Tuesday, January 4th. The sun will rise at 8:19. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 56 minutes, setting at 5:15. The moon is new today, and won’t be visible.
There is a partial solar eclipse in progress for Europe, North Africa and as far a China. This is the companion to the lunar eclipse we had December 21st. Since the lunar eclipse was total, this solar eclipse is not centrally aligned. Eclipses occur in seasons with an interval of a bit less than 6 months[, making a complete eclipse year of 346 days]. Eclipses generally occur in pairs in each eclipse season, one lunar eclipse followed two weeks later by a solar eclipse or vice versa. On rare occasions three eclipse cam occur at two week intervals: A partial solar eclipse , a very central lunar eclipse and another partial solar eclipse. Such a triad will occur this year. A partial solar eclipse on June 1st., a total lunar eclipse June 15th and another partial solar eclipse July 1st. Non will be visible from here.
*Text in brackets was omitted due to time constraints
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Check out the NASA Eclipse web site for 2011.
01/03/11 – Ephemeris – The earth at perihelion and the Quadrantid meteor shower
Monday, January 3rd. The sun will rise at 8:19. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 55 minutes, setting at 5:14. The moon, 1 day before first quarter, will rise at 8:26 tomorrow morning.
We have two celestial events today. Around 2:30 this afternoon the earth with be at its closest point to the sun called perihelion, only 91.4 million miles. We’re a little too far north to need the extra sun screen. What really happens is the earth travels faster in its orbit making winter the shortest season. Tonight will see the peak of the Quadrantid meteor shower. These meteors seem to come from the defunct constellation of the Quadrangle near the tip of the handle of the Big Dipper. It can be as productive as the meteors of August. Up to 100 an hour may be seen toward dawn when the radiant point is high in the sky. Early in the evening the radiant will be low in the north giving us fewer but longer meteor trails in the sky.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Quadrantid meteor shower radiant at 1:30 a.m. Looking northeast.
2010 in review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,900 times in 2010. That’s about 7 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 95 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 47 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was September 20th with 172 views. The most popular post that day was 9/20/10 – Ephemeris – Mercury and Jupiter.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were en.wordpress.com, ephemeris.bjmoler.org, search.aol.com, obama-scandal-exposed.co.cc, and search.conduit.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for comet hartley 2 ephemeris, comet hartley ephemeris, hartley 2 ephemeris, jupiter 9/20/10, and biggest dog bone.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
9/20/10 – Ephemeris – Mercury and Jupiter September 2010
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10/04/10 – Ephemeris – Comet Hartley 2 October 2010
12/20/10 – 12/21/10 Live eclipse blogging December 2010
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12/20/10 – Ephemeris – Total lunar eclipse tomorrow morning December 2010
The biggest dog bone I’ve ever seen. November 2010
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 