Super "Supermoon"

Get ready for yet another supermoon, except this one promises to be closer and larger. In the days ahead the moon will start to get a little bigger as it makes its closest approach to earth since 1948. Back then a gallon of gas cost 16 cents!! The supermoon will hit its peak on Monday November 14th at 8:52 am. Weekend viewing will be very good as skies should remain mostly clear.

This supermoon will appear 16% larger and shine 30% brighter than when its at its furthest point from earth. This is because the moon will be at its closest approach during it's elliptical orbit around the Earth. This close approach is known as the perigee. When a full moon coincides with perigee, it can seem bigger and brighter and that's what we will see this Monday.

To give you a better idea of what we are talking about, the moon orbits the earth in an oval pattern. There are parts of the year when it is closer to us (perigee) and times when its farther away (apogee). This weekend it will be at the closest point to us.  

 

 The local NWS office says we may get more coastal flooding due to extra high, high tides due to the closer moon:

THE APPROACH OF THE FULL MOON EARLY NEXT WEEK WILL BRING INCREASING 
TIDAL HEIGHTS ACROSS SOUTH FLORIDA THIS UPCOMING WEEKEND. IF TIDAL 
DEPARTURES CONTINUE ABOVE NORMAL, MINOR COASTAL FLOODING MAY BE 
POSSIBLE WITH HIGH TIDES. 

Solar Displays

On Wednesday morning a big display of Northern lights (Auroras) was seen in areas near the North Pole especially in Alaska. The following information is provided courtesy spaceweather.com. This display was due to a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME for short, which is simply a huge burp of energy coming out of the sun.  The picture shows an aurora as seen from Fairbanks, Alaska, it was snapped by Marketta Murray.

It was reported the CME arrived by midnight Alaska time, with the display going for hours.

NASA suggests more CMEs are expected in the near future. These displays will be due to a hole opening in the sun's atmosphere.

These are called "Coronal Holes" and they will spew out a stream of Solar Wind. The wind will aim for us.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the Coronal Hole on Nov. 9th:

These holes are areas where the sun's magnetic field opens up and lets loose a very strong stream of energy.

This stream lets "Plasma", or ionized gas that's typically trapped by the sun's magnetic field, to burst out and fly away from the sun.

Part of this stream of Plasma is on its way here and should arrive between the 11th & 12th of November.

This CME should spark more auroras in our atmosphere.

This picture shows where the Coronal Hole can be found acting as a door letting Plasma loose.

These CMEs can cause some cell phone and satellite disruptions. Very strong ones may cause power outages.

Most of these displays will be seen near the Arctic Circle.

Stay tuned.

February will be 1 day longer this year

Typically this month has 28 days, but not this year. This time around we will have 29, go ahead check your calendar.

When this happens, its known as a leap year. Instead of having 365 days we will end up with 366. But why?

What is a leap year?
A leap year gets one extra day to keep our calendars in working order. It keeps the seasons and holidays happening at the same time. Without knowing the start of spring for example, farmers would have a difficult time knowing when to seed.


A typical year, to be precise,consists of 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds. This is how long it takes the earth to go around the sun once. But Mother Earth is slowing down. If this process continues unchecked for hundreds of years, Halloween may end up 
falling on November 2nd! After 750 years for example, June would start in the middle of winter.

How did we correct it?

Very long story, but even thousands of years ago, a Greek astronomer by the name of Hipparchus, realized something had to be done. He did the math and figured out if 1 extra day was added every 4 years, he could compensate for the slowdown allowing all the holidays and seasonal changes to take place on the same dates.

Problem solved?
Not quite, nothing is ever that simple. When you factor in the earth's orbit, it's rotational speed slowing down, etc...more adjustments needed to be made. We know about the Leap Years, but every so often we need to add an extra second to the year. (Here's where it gets a tad complicated)

Leap seconds!
The first leap second was added in 1972. Back then we were about 10 seconds behind where we should be, according to the Atomic Clock (don't ask). Since then, we've added 26 leap seconds to accommodate the earth's slow down. (Don't we all slow down when we get old?) The last time we added a leap second was June 30th, 2015.

So we're back on track?
Kind of. (Here comes the headache) Because time and earth's orbit are not 100% precise, this whole business of adding an extra day every 4 years gets thrown out the window, every 100 years.

Every 400 years we go back to adding the extra day. But not always so. For example in the year 2000, which was also a leap year, we should have gone back to skipping the extra day. But, here we go, since it was also divisible by 400, the 100 year rule was  ignored.

Experts say, "This long-term solution creates an average year length of 365.2425 days, still slightly off the required target of 365.2421897 days, making even this complicated modern arrangement incorrect by one day over a period of just under 4,000 years."

I need a drink! Enjoy the extra day!