Eclipse

I need to find a good astronomical event RSS feed and stop relying upon my officemate to give me notice of such things — what if I were to miss an intragalactic supernova (the last such one was in 1604) or something like that? He did however let me know about yesterday morning’s total lunar eclipse, and thanks to Charlie-cat wanting his breakfast as usual at 3:10 in the morning, we were able to see it. Pica and I went out on the tarmac in front and had a brief gaze; I reminded her that the last lunar eclipse we saw was on October 27, 2004, the night the Red Sox won the World Series.

It looks like the next exciting astronomical event will be the Aurigid meteor shower, coming up on September 1st. This is predicted to be an especially strong outburst, due to the Earth passing right through the dust cloud of the long-period comet C/1911 N1 (Kiess). It is estimated that the peak of the shower will occur at 11:36 UTC plus or minus 20 minutes (this is 4:36 AM PDT).