November 16—29, 2015
Mt. Washington — It was just as celebrity astronomy writers had described, except that I was indoors gazing out a picture window when a Taurid fireball came into my peripheral vision at 4 a.m. on Sunday the 8th. I’d been awakened by sounds in the next room at a lodge perched on a hilltop clearing where I was spending the weekend. My room opened onto a lounge where a wall of windows looked out on a broad, dark mountain landscape and pristine sky arching from the northeast to the south. As any avid stargazer would, I took the opportunity to get up to see the week’s culminating sky event. In the east-southeast a crisp crescent moon floated below luminous Venus, and little red Mars glowed close above the goddess planet. Pressing my head to the glass, I strained to look upward to locate Jupiter and Regulus — to complete the neat, right-leaning diagonal line of heavenly bodies that stretched to the constellation Leo the Lion.
My sleepy attention was suddenly ignited by a curve of green light at the leading edge of a round ball of white light trailed by a smudgy white streak traveling towards the string of planets from the right, south. Quickly, the fireball silently exploded and vanished. I was startled, at first apprehensive of the alien sight, just like the people I’d read about who call the police when they see a fireball meteor. Then, I was thrilled, a lone witness to a Taurid fireball burning up beside the great planetary and starry night configuration I’d gone to the window to see! I headed back to bed with my secret and when I awoke at 6 a.m. I went outdoors to find the whole celestial gathering risen high in the dawn sky, enhanced by the indelible impression the green-tinted fireball had made.
Anyone with a lookout to the southeast, whether in an urban or rural setting, might have seen everything I saw, from indoors or out, and perhaps you did! Going forward, the planetary line-up continues and so does the possibility of Taurid fireballs.
Overlapping with the Taurid shower, the next in the succession of autumn meteor showers is the Leonids, predicted to peak after midnight Tuesday the 17th until dawn on Wednesday the 18th. It’s worth looking during the hours before dawn on the days before and after the predicted peak. Leo the Lion — well known to us in the pre-dawn eastern sky — is the radiant, or point of origin, of this shower. Expect 10 – 15 shooting stars per hour anywhere in the sky, in addition to incidental meteors and possible North Taurids.
From the 16th – 18th the waxing (increasing in size) crescent moon appears in the afternoon and evening sky and sets before midnight. First quarter, also known as half moon, occurs on the 19th, leading into the waxing gibbous (larger than half) phases when the moon is present part of the day and much of the night. The Full Frost Moon reaches full phase November 25 at 5:44 p.m.; it is an all-night moon that ushers in the late night and morning waning (decreasing in size) phases of our moon.
Resources:
Taurid fireball image — https://plus.google.com/communities/114760292348084683012
Stumpsprouts — dark sky guest lodge in Hawley, MA – https://www.stumpsprouts.com/
