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Was it Douglas Adams who wrote, "Time's an illusion, lunch time doubly so," or did I just make that up? No. I think it was Douglas Adams. I wish it had been me. In any case, it's a fun quote and has absolutely nothing to do with this month's article other than another year's gone by and, incredibly, I got through it mostly unscathed. That also has nothing to do with this month's article, but it's true, other than a few cuts and bruises, I got through 2003 no worse for wear. And when I did scrape my knee or bloody my nose, a couple of lunar eclipses and a late July sky full of Milky Way, a few early Perseid meteors and big, bright Mars took the sting out.
We have a couple of Total Lunar Eclipses again, the first on May 4 and visible in the Old Country, the second on October 28, visible in the Americas. The planets trip to light fantastic as usual; Mars and Saturn are in conjunction on May 24, not far from the Beehive cluster; Venus and Mercury are both at their best eastern elongation on March 29, and Venus glances off the Pleiades on April 3-4. As for meteor showers - my favorite starry night activity - the moon washes out the eta Aquarids in May as well as the late July/early August Aquarids, Capricornids and Perseids. The middle of July is ripe for any early Aquarids and really early Perseids, and the Perseid peak is almost moon free. The Orionids and Leonids are both also mostly moon free; the waxing gibbous moon sets before the Orionid radiant reaches any significant altitude, and the Leonids peak just a few days after the New Moon. The best meteor shower of 2004 will be the Geminids, 11 months from now, when they peak just one day after the New Moon. They should be one of the year's highlights. The remaining highlights of 2004 - fanfare, please - are the transit of Venus across the sun on June 8, and the late April to mid-May probable naked-eye splash of comet C/2001 Q4 NEAT with a fainter sidekick, comet C/2002 T7 LINEAR. January highlights include Venus climbing higher and higher in the evening sky; on the 15th it is about 10 south of magnitude 5.9 Uranus at 7:00pm UT. Mercury, our innermost planet, is at greatest elongation on the 17th, about 240 from the sun in the predawn sky and definitely seeable. Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Things to do and see in 2004 in Amateur Astronomy is owned by . Permission to republish Things to do and see in 2004 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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