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January 3, 2008

Tonight: 5 degrees, and now the meteors show up

We're talking a predicted low of 5 degrees tonight. So people really should stay inside.

Which is too bad for stargazers, who have the chance of catching the optimum sight of a meteor shower tonight. Peak viewing time in the United States is 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. -- tonight into tomorrow -- when the Quadrantids shower is expected high in the northern hemisphere.

The meteor shower's name, which may conjure a faux-science word from an abandoned script of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, came about because the meteors appear to come from abandoned constellation Quadrans Muralis, according to a summary on NASA's Web site.

NASA's Web site, in a summary, also offers this advice:

"To view the Quadrantids, dress warmly and find a dark area with a clear view of the sky. Use a tree or pole to block the light from the moon.

"Look towards the north. While the Quadrantids can be seen anywhere in the sky, they will appear to be coming from the area between Draco, Hercules and Boötes. Estimates call for between 50 to 130 meteors per hour."

For those living in these parts, dress warmly is the understatement of the year, and we're only on Jan. 3. NASA may not have had in mind cold of this kind, so stargazers will want to want to gaze from indoors, nursing a cup or three of cocoa.

Things are expected to warm up, relatively speaking, over the next few days, to a balmy high of 51 degrees expected Monday.

Tomorrow's temperature will shoot up ... to a high of 32 degrees and a low tomorrow night of 18 degrees, the latter a more than three-fold increase from tonight's low!

Yeah, that's still too cold.

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 7:05 PM | Permalink

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