Dateline 2024: Total Solar Eclipse

In little more than six years, another total solar eclipse across the continental U.S. will pass as close as Southern Illinois and Indiana.  Like our recent eclipse of August 21, 2017, the next total solar eclipse will also take place on a Monday and, remarkably, just a few minutes earlier in the day.  Save the date: April 8, 2024.   Actually, not long to wait.  Think about what you were doing around December 7, 2011.  Can you remember?  No question about it, the next six years will go faster than the previous six did.  Seems that as we age our sense of time changes, and time seems to go faster and faster.

The point of maximum length of totality for the 2017 eclipse was 12 miles NW of the center of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where totality lasted 2m40s and the path of totality was 71 miles wide.

The point of maximum length of totality for the 2024 eclipse will be near Nazas, Mexico (in the state of Durango), where totality will last 4m28s and the path of totality will be 123 miles wide.  Yes, this will be a longer eclipse!

Remarkably, there is a location in southern Illinois that is on the centerline of both the 2017 and 2024 eclipses!  That location is 37°38’32” N, 89°15’55” W, SW of Carbondale, Illinois, near Cedar Lake and the Midland Hills Country Club.

When did a total solar eclipse last grace Dodgeville, Wisconsin?  Nearly 639 years ago, on May 16, 1379.  The duration of totality was 3m48s.  Perhaps the Oneota people then living in this area witnessed the event.

The next total solar eclipse visible from Dodgeville won’t happen for another 654 years.  There’ll be annular eclipses in 2048, 2213, 2410, 2421, and 2614.  Then, finally, on June 17, 2672, the totally-eclipsed Sun will once again grace the skies of Dodgeville—weather permitting, of course.  The duration of the eclipse at Dodgeville will be 2m47s.  There will be another annular eclipse in 2678, followed by another total eclipse (duration 3m01s) on June 8, 2681.  Then, just two years later there’ll be another total eclipse at Dodgeville: on November 10, 2683 (0m49s).  That’s three total eclipses and one annular eclipse visible at Dodgeville in just 11 years!

Faintest Constellations

There are a dozen constellations with no star brighter than +4.0 magnitude.  Many of them are deep in the southern sky.  They are:

ANTLIA, the Air Pump
Brightest Star: Alpha Antliae, apparent visual magnitude +4.25

ANT-lee-uh

CAELUM, the Engraving Tool
Brightest Star: Alpha Caeli, apparent visual magnitude +4.45

SEE-lum

CAMELOPARDALIS, the Giraffe
Brightest Star: Beta Camelopardalis, apparent visual magnitude +4.02

cuh-MEL-oh- PAR-duh-liss

CHAMAELEON, the Chameleon
Brightest Star: Alpha Chamaeleontis, apparent visual magnitude +4.047

cuh-MEAL-yun, or cuh-MEAL-ee-un

COMA BERENICES, Berenice’s Hair
Brightest Star: Beta Comae Berenices, apparent visual magnitude +4.25

COE-muh BER-uh-NICE-eez

CORONA AUSTRALIS, the Southern Crown
Brightest Star: Meridiana, apparent visual magnitude +4.087

cuh-ROE-nuh aw-STRAL-iss

MENSA, the Table Mountain
Brightest Star: Alpha Mensae, apparent visual magnitude +5.09

MEN-suh

MICROSCOPIUM, the Microscope
Brightest Star: Gamma Microscopii, apparent visual magnitude +4.654

my-cruh-SCOPE-ee-um

NORMA, the Carpenter’s Square
Brightest Star: Gamma2 Normae, apparent visual magnitude +4.02

NOR-muh

SCULPTOR, the Sculptor
Brightest Star: Alpha Sculptoris, apparent visual magnitude +4.27

SCULP-ter

SEXTANS, the Sextant
Brightest Star: Alpha Sextantis, apparent visual magnitude +4.49

SEX-tunz

VULPECULA, the Fox
Brightest Star: Anser, apparent visual magnitude +4.45

vul-PECK-yuh-luh

Falling Ice Chunks

There are a number of documented cases of large chunks of ice falling out of a clear blue sky.  After we eliminate ice falling from airplanes or nearby thunderstorms, there still appear to be some events that remain unexplained.

I first heard of this phenomenon over ten years ago, when a 50-pound chunk of ice fell through Jan Kenkel‘s roof in Dubuque, Iowa on Thursday morning, July 26, 2007.

These unexplained falling ice chunks are been given a rather inappropriate name: megacryometeor.  Why don’t we just call them “falling ice chunks”  or FICs for short, at least until they receive an explanation?

It almost certainly is some sort of unusual atmospheric phenomenon, as ice balls from space would vaporize before they reach the ground.

An unknown blogger (in Spain?) has been documenting news articles about all manner of falling ice chunks since the Dubuque event.  The blog is called HALS, which is the plural abbreviation for hydroaerolite—certainly a better name than “megacryometeor”—though this perhaps is also a geological term1 used to describe “silty sediments transported by the wind and deposited on a temporarily wet surface”.

Obviously, more peer-reviewed scientific research needs to be done on these falling ice chunks, megacryometeors, hydroaerolites, or what have you.

1 For example, see Földvári, A. (1958). “Hydroaerolite” Rocks in the Quaternary Deposits of Hungary. Acta Geologica Hungarica 5, 287-292.

The LED Lighting Revolution

Solid state lighting, namely light-emitting diodes (LEDs), are completely revolutionizing indoor and outdoor lighting.  Here’s why:

  1. White LEDs on the market today have a system luminous efficacy ranging from 50 (least efficient) to 80 (average) to 140 (most efficient) lumens per watt.  This far exceeds the luminous efficacy of incandescent (5-35 lumens/watt), and generally exceeds compact fluorescents (45-60 lumens/watt).  Prototypes of the next generation of white LEDs have luminous efficacies up to 150 lumens/watt, and theoretically 200-250 lumens per watt may someday be achievable.  Since the traditional white light source of choice for outdoor lighting has been metal halide with a luminous efficacy of 65-115 lumens/watt, white LEDs are well on the way towards replacing metal halide.  Even the more efficient orange high pressure sodium (HPS) lights, with an efficacy of 150 lumens/watt, are nearly matched by the best white LEDs.  Only monochromatic low-pressure sodium (LPS) with an efficacy of 183-200 lumens/watt will give more lumens per watt than the best white LEDs.
  2. White LEDs last much longer than other light sources: 50,000 to 100,000 hours (between 12 and 24 years, operating dusk-to-dawn 365 days a year).  In comparison, high pressure sodium typically lasts about 5 years, and metal halide a little less at 4 years.
  3. Unlike high-intensity discharge (HID) sources such as metal halide, HPS, LPS, and mercury vapor, white LEDs are “instant on / instant off” with no warmup time to full brightness, so they can be switched on and off as often as you like with no shortening of bulb life; and they are easily dimmable. LEDs will render dusk-to-dawn lighting a questionable option rather than an operational necessity.

My only concern is that we finally “get it right” with LEDs instead of blindly following the “more is better” philosophy as we have with every lighting efficiency improvement in the past.  Low levels of white light (fully shielded to minimize direct source glare) is the most effective and efficient way to provide adequate illumination.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise, however.  Think of the light provided by a full moon as we have this week.

Unfortunately, most places that is not what is happening.  Light levels are increasing, as is the amount of lighting.  We seem well on the way towards eliminating anything resembling a natural nighttime environment for most people.  I don’t know about you, but that is not a world I want to live in.

References
DIAL (15 June 2016). Efficiency of LEDs: The highest luminous efficacy of a white LED.  Retrieved from https://www.dial.de/en/blog/article/efficiency-of-leds-the-highest-luminous-efficacy-of-a-white-led/.

Kyba, C., Kuester, T., et al. 2017, Science Advances, 3, 11, e1701528

Planets Without Satellites

It may be rare for terrestrial planets to be accompanied by satellites, especially large ones.  It is far too early for us to draw any conclusions about terrestrial exoplanets (as no terrestrial exoplanet exomoons have yet been detectable), but in our own solar system, only two planets have no satellites, and they are both terrestrial planets: Mercury and Venus.  Mars has two small satellites that are almost certainly captured asteroids from the adjacent asteroid belt rather than primordial moons, and that leaves only the Earth among the terrestrial planets to host a large satellite, though it, too, is almost certainly not primordial.  Only the giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) have large systems of satellites, at least some of which may have formed while the planet itself was forming.

Though neither Mercury nor Venus has any natural satellites, Venus is known to have at least four transient quasi-satellites, more generally referred to as co-orbitals.  They are:

322756 (2001 CK32)
Comes close to both Earth and Mercury in its eccentric orbit (e=0.38).
Wiki  JPL  Orrery

2002 VE68
Comes close to both Earth and Mercury in its eccentric orbit (e=0.41).
Wiki  JPL  Orrery

2012 XE133
Comes close to both Earth and Mercury in its eccentric orbit (e=0.43).
Wiki JPL Orrery

2013 ND15
Comes close to both Earth and Mercury in its very eccentric orbit (e=0.61), and is the only known trojan of Venus, currently residing near its L4 Lagrangian point.
Wiki JPL Orrery

2015 WZ12 is a possible fifth Venus co-orbital candidate.  Observations during the next favorable observing opportunity in November of this year will hopefully better determine its orbit and nature.

2015 WZ12
Possible Venus co-orbital.
Wiki JPL Orrery

There is concern that there may be many more Venus co-orbitals, as yet undiscovered (and challenging to discover) that pose risks as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) to our planet.

There are no known Mercury co-orbitals.  If any do exist, they will be exceedingly difficult to detect since they will always be in the glare of the Sun as seen from Earth.

Asteroids orbiting interior to Mercury’s orbit (a < 0.387 AU) would be called vulcanoids.  I say “would be” because none have been discovered yet, though in all fairness, they will be extremely difficult to detect.

A spacecraft orbiting interior to Mercury’s orbit looking outward would be an ideal platform for detecting, inventorying, and characterizing all potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) that exist in the inner solar system. A surveillance telescope in a circular orbit 0.30 AU from the Sun would orbit the Sun every 60 days.

The Parker Solar Probe, scheduled to launch later this year, will orbit the Sun between 0.73 AU and an extraordinarily close 0.04 AU, though it will be looking towards the Sun, not away from it.  The Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) is a proposed mission to look specifically for PHAs using an infrared telescope from a vantage point at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point.

References
de la Fuente Marcos, C., & de la Fuente Marcos, R. 2014, MNRAS, 439, 2970
de la Fuente Marcos, C., & de la Fuente Marcos, R. 2017, RNAAS, 1, 3
Sheppard, S., & Trujillo, C. 2009, Icarus, 202, 12

It Came from Outer Space

Just watched a sci-fi movie this past weekend I had never seen before, thanks to Netflix.  In fact, this movie was released three years before I was born—in 1953.  I probably passed this one by before now because of its cheesy, B-movie title: It Came from Outer Space.

Actually, this movie was far better than I had expected.  Definitely a sci-fi classic, a must see for anyone interested in the science fiction genre.  It is rated “G” so is suitable for all ages (so rare nowadays for any dramatic movie, sadly), and is 1h21m in length, so not a huge time commitment.  The story is by noted author Ray Bradbury (1920-2012).

And, hey, the lead characters are an amateur astronomer and his gorgeous schoolteacher girlfriend, living in Arizona.

Without giving away too much of the plot, let me just say that aliens crash land in Arizona, and are simply trying to repair their damaged spacecraft so they can return to outer space.  How do we humans react?  All too predictably, sad to say.  The unknown frightens us, and  “What we don’t understand we want to destroy.”

As you’d expect from Bradbury, it is a good story.  Enjoy.  And think about the implications for the survival of the human race.

Spirit and Opportunity

The Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars on January 4, 2004 and January 25, 2004, respectively.  Spirit continued operating until contact was lost on March 22, 2010, a total of 2,269 Earth days, which is 2,208 days on Mars (sols)1Spirit operated on the Martian surface 24.5 times as long as its design life of 90 sols.

Even more amazing: Opportunity has been operating on the Martian surface (as of this publication date) for 5,108 Earth days, which is 4,971 sols.   That’s 55.2 times its design life of 90 sols!

Spirit and Opportunity faced their greatest challenge up to that point during the global Martian dust storm of July 2007.  Here is what I wrote about it back then.

Spirit and Opportunity‘s Greatest Challenge (7-26-07)

The intrepid Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity—which have been operating on the surface of Mars over 14 times longer than planned—each carry two 8 amp-hour lithium batteries, and these batteries are charged by solar panels.  Before dust storms began significantly reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the rovers’ solar panels, they were generating about 700 watt-hours of electricity each day—enough to power a 100-watt light bulb for seven hours.  Not much, it may seem, but plenty enough to operate each rover’s internal heaters, motors, scientific instruments, and communication equipment.

In recent weeks, both rovers have seriously been affected by the dust storms, particularly Opportunity which last week was able to generate only 128 watt-hours of electricity on the worst day.  With precious little energy to replenish the internal batteries, controllers have hunkered down the rovers to conserve energy for the most critical need—internal heaters to keep the core electronics warm enough to operate.  Remember, the average surface temperature on Mars is -85° F!

At press time, weather conditions appear to be improving for both rovers, but there are still worries that the rovers could have been damaged by all that dust blowing at them for days on end.


As it turns out, after the global dust storm of 2007 subsided, the rovers benefited from subsequent “cleaning events” where the winds of Mars blew most of the dust off of the solar panels.

There have been no global dust storms on Mars since 2007; however, another one is anticipated later this year.  Hopefully, our intrepid Opportunity will weather the storm and continue to generate enough life-giving power from its precious solar panels .

1A Martian day is called a sol and is slightly longer than an Earth day.  A mean solar day on Earth is 24h00m00s, by definition, but a mean solar day on Mars is 24h39m35.244s Earth time.  To convert Earth days to Martian sols, divide the number of Earth days by 1.0275.

A Better Lotion Bottle

For many of us, winter in the Upper Midwest means dry, cracked hands and nasty splits at the ends of our thumbs and fingers.  The only way to avoid or at least mitigate this is to apply lotion to your hands after every hand washing, because soap removes too much of your skin’s natural moisturizing oils (lipids).

I’m not a big fan of pump dispensers when it comes to lotion.  When the pump has pumped all the lotion it can, there is still a lot of lotion left behind in the bottle.  And most of us don’t want to go through the extra effort needed to get to the remaining lotion, so we throw the bottle out rather than utilizing the remaining lotion and then recycling the bottle.

Wasteful lotion container on the left – Better lotion container on the right

Recently, just to see how much lotion was left in a Gold Bond® pump dispenser (excellent lotion, by the way), we used a razor blade to cut all the way around the midsection of the lotion bottle, separating it into roughly two halves.  Then we used a spoon to scoop out all the remaining lotion in the two halves and put it into a clean plastic tub—formerly a sour cream container.  The amount of leftover lotion is substantial, as you can see in the photograph below.  A many-days supply, to be sure!

Leftover lotion from a seemingly empty pump dispenser

We consumers need to put pressure on pump-dispenser lotion manufacturers to package their lotions in containers that make it easy to extract all the lotion.  Some lotion manufacturers are already doing this, and we should purchase their products.  O’Keeffe’s® Working Hands® is one good example.

You can get all of the lotion out of a container like this

Sometimes, lotion manufacturers package their product in both types of containers—pump dispensers and tub containers—but your local grocery store, pharmacy, or big-box store only carries the less environmentally-friendly pump-dispenser type of container.  Do your research, and meet with the store manager to ask them to carry the tub container alternative instead of—or in addition to—the pump dispenser.

Each and every day we can make choices that are better for our environment.  This is yet another example: use all the product and make it easy to recycle the container.

Welcome to the Zooniverse!

We live in a society where science is little more than a “spectator sport” for most of us who have an interest in it.  Data collection and original research often require substantial investments of time and money, as well as a long-term commitment.  Those of us who are already working full time and, in spite of that, have little discretionary income, often find “participatory science” out of reach, no matter how great our enthusiasm or aptitude.

As today’s scientific instruments increasingly generate enormous quantities of data, the people who “do science” for a living are too few in number to analyze all that data.  Fortunately, this is one area where “citizen scientists” can help.

There are a number of interesting scientific projects that lend themselves well to “crowd sourcing”, and Zooniverse is a portal to many of them.

Here are the currently active Zooniverse projects in the disciplines of astronomy and physics.

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9
Discover new brown dwarfs and possibly a new solar system planet by scrutinizing images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope (WISE).

Comet Hunters
Discover new comets previously misidentified as asteroids by analyzing deep images taken by the Subaru 8.2-meter telescope in Hawaii.

Disk Detective
Help search for stars with undiscovered disks of dust around them.  These stars show us where to look for planetary systems and how they form.

Exoplanet Explorers
Discover transiting exoplanet candidates in Kepler’s K2 data.

Galaxy Zoo   Galaxy Zoo: 3D
Classify galaxies, many of which have never been studied before, and look for unusual features.

Gravity Spy
Identify and characterize “glitches” in LIGO data to make it easier to identify gravitational wave events.

Higgs Hunters
Help search for unknown exotic particles in data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider.

Milky Way Project
Classify images from two infrared space telescopes: the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST) and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope (WISE).

Planet Four
Identify and measure features on the surface of Mars.

Planet Hunters
Discover transiting exoplanet candidates in data from the Kepler spacecraft.

Radio Galaxy Zoo
Search radio images of galaxies for evidence of jets caused by matter falling into supermassive black holes.

Radio Meteor Zoo
Identify meteors through the reflection of radio waves from their ionization trails.

Solar Stormwatch II
Characterize solar storms and their interaction with the solar wind through the analysis of images from NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft.

Supernova Hunters
Scrutinize the most recent images collected by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii in comparison to reference images to discover new supernovae that can then be immediately followed by ground-based and space-based telescopes.

All of these projects utilize “machine learning” computer algorithms such as neural networks and random forests (artificial intelligence, or AI) to some extent, and in fact citizen scientist participants help “train” these algorithms so they do a better job of finding or classifying or whatever.  For a great introduction to this subject, see “Machines Learning Astronomy” by Sky & Telescope news editor Monica Young in the December 2017 issue, pp. 20-27.

As machine learning algorithms get better and better, they may no longer need citizen scientists to train them.

In the meantime, have fun and contribute to science!

Zodiacal Light 2018

In this year of 2018, the best dates and times for observing the zodiacal light are listed below.  The sky must be very clear.  The specific times listed are for Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

2018 Begin End Direction
Fri. Feb. 2 6:52 p.m. 7:52 p.m. West
Sat. Feb. 3 6:53 p.m. 7:53 p.m. West
Sun. Feb. 4 6:54 p.m. 7:54 p.m. West
Mon. Feb. 5 6:55 p.m. 7:55 p.m. West
Tue. Feb. 6 6:57 p.m. 7:57 p.m. West
Wed. Feb. 7 6:58 p.m. 7:58 p.m. West
Thu. Feb. 8 6:59 p.m. 7:59 p.m. West
Fri. Feb. 9 7:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m. West
Sat. Feb. 10 7:01 p.m. 8:01 p.m. West
Sun. Feb. 11 7:02 p.m. 8:02 p.m. West
Mon. Feb. 12 7:04 p.m. 8:04 p.m. West
Tue. Feb. 13 7:05 p.m. 8:05 p.m. West
Wed. Feb. 14 7:06 p.m. 8:06 p.m. West
Thu. Feb. 15 7:07 p.m. 8:07 p.m. West
Fri. Feb. 16 7:08 p.m. 8:08 p.m. West
Sat. Mar. 3 7:27 p.m. 7:59 p.m. West
Sun. Mar. 4 7:28 p.m. 8:28 p.m. West
Mon. Mar. 5 7:29 p.m. 8:29 p.m. West
Tue. Mar. 6 7:30 p.m. 8:30 p.m. West
Wed. Mar. 7 7:32 p.m. 8:32 p.m. West
Thu. Mar. 8 7:33 p.m. 8:33 p.m. West
Fri. Mar. 9 7:34 p.m. 8:34 p.m. West
Sat. Mar. 10 7:35 p.m. 8:35 p.m. West
Sun. Mar. 11 8:37 p.m. 9:37 p.m. West
Mon. Mar. 12 8:38 p.m. 9:38 p.m. West
Tue. Mar. 13 8:39 p.m. 9:39 p.m. West
Wed. Mar. 14 8:41 p.m. 9:41 p.m. West
Thu. Mar. 15 8:42 p.m. 9:42 p.m. West
Fri. Mar. 16 8:43 p.m. 9:43 p.m. West
Sat. Mar. 17 8:44 p.m. 9:44 p.m. West
Sun. Mar. 18 8:46 p.m. 9:46 p.m. West
Mon. Mar. 19 9:38 p.m. 9:47 p.m. West
Mon. Apr. 2 9:06 p.m. 9:56 p.m. West
Tue. Apr. 3 9:08 p.m. 10:08 p.m. West
Wed. Apr. 4 9:09 p.m. 10:09 p.m. West
Thu. Apr. 5 9:11 p.m. 10:11 p.m. West
Fri. Apr. 6 9:12 p.m. 10:12 p.m. West
Sat. Apr. 7 9:14 p.m. 10:14 p.m. West
Sun. Apr. 8 9:15 p.m. 10:15 p.m. West
Mon. Apr. 9 9:17 p.m. 10:17 p.m. West
Tue. Apr. 10 9:18 p.m. 10:18 p.m. West
Wed. Apr. 11 9:20 p.m. 10:20 p.m. West
Thu. Apr. 12 9:21 p.m. 10:21 p.m. West
Fri. Apr. 13 9:23 p.m. 10:23 p.m. West
Sat. Apr. 14 9:25 p.m. 10:25 p.m. West
Sun. Apr. 15 9:26 p.m. 10:26 p.m. West
Mon. Apr. 16 9:28 p.m. 10:28 p.m. West
Tue. Apr. 17 9:43 p.m. 10:29 p.m. West
Thu. Aug. 9 3:08 a.m. 3:44 a.m. East
Fri. Aug. 10 3:09 a.m. 4:09 a.m. East
Sat. Aug. 11 3:11 a.m. 4:11 a.m. East
Sun. Aug. 12 3:13 a.m. 4:13 a.m. East
Mon. Aug. 13 3:14 a.m. 4:14 a.m. East
Tue. Aug. 14 3:16 a.m. 4:16 a.m. East
Wed. Aug. 15 3:18 a.m. 4:18 a.m. East
Thu. Aug. 16 3:19 a.m. 4:19 a.m. East
Fri. Aug. 17 3:21 a.m. 4:21 a.m. East
Sat. Aug. 18 3:22 a.m. 4:22 a.m. East
Sun. Aug. 19 3:24 a.m. 4:24 a.m. East
Mon. Aug. 20 3:26 a.m. 4:26 a.m. East
Tue. Aug. 21 3:27 a.m. 4:27 a.m. East
Wed. Aug. 22 3:29 a.m. 4:29 a.m. East
Thu. Aug. 23 3:30 a.m. 4:30 a.m. East
Fri. Aug. 24 4:20 a.m. 4:32 a.m. East
Sat. Sep. 8 3:54 a.m. 4:54 a.m. East
Sun. Sep. 9 3:55 a.m. 4:55 a.m. East
Mon. Sep. 10 3:57 a.m. 4:57 a.m. East
Tue. Sep. 11 3:58 a.m. 4:58 a.m. East
Wed. Sep. 12 3:59 a.m. 4:59 a.m. East
Thu. Sep. 13 4:01 a.m. 5:01 a.m. East
Fri. Sep. 14 4:02 a.m. 5:02 a.m. East
Sat. Sep. 15 4:03 a.m. 5:03 a.m. East
Sun. Sep. 16 4:05 a.m. 5:05 a.m. East
Mon. Sep. 17 4:06 a.m. 5:06 a.m. East
Tue. Sep. 18 4:07 a.m. 5:07 a.m. East
Wed. Sep. 19 4:09 a.m. 5:09 a.m. East
Thu. Sep. 20 4:10 a.m. 5:10 a.m. East
Fri. Sep. 21 4:11 a.m. 5:11 a.m. East
Sat. Sep. 22 4:12 a.m. 5:12 a.m. East
Sun. Sep. 23 5:07 a.m. 5:14 a.m. East
Sun. Oct. 7 4:30 a.m. 5:04 a.m. East
Mon. Oct. 8 4:32 a.m. 5:32 a.m. East
Tue. Oct. 9 4:33 a.m. 5:33 a.m. East
Wed. Oct. 10 4:34 a.m. 5:34 a.m. East
Thu. Oct. 11 4:35 a.m. 5:35 a.m. East
Fri. Oct. 12 4:36 a.m. 5:36 a.m. East
Sat. Oct. 13 4:37 a.m. 5:37 a.m. East
Sun. Oct. 14 4:39 a.m. 5:39 a.m. East
Mon. Oct. 15 4:40 a.m. 5:40 a.m. East
Tue. Oct. 16 4:41 a.m. 5:41 a.m. East
Wed. Oct. 17 4:42 a.m. 5:42 a.m. East
Thu. Oct. 18 4:43 a.m. 5:43 a.m. East
Fri. Oct. 19 4:44 a.m. 5:44 a.m. East
Sat. Oct. 20 4:45 a.m. 5:45 a.m. East
Sun. Oct. 21 4:47 a.m. 5:47 a.m. East
Mon. Oct. 22 4:57 a.m. 5:48 a.m. East

On the February, March, and April evenings listed above, you will see a broad, faint band of light extending upwards from the western horizon, sloping a little to the left, and reaching nearly halfway to the top of the sky.

On the August, September, and October mornings listed above, you will see a broad, faint band of light extending upwards from the eastern horizon, sloping a little to the right, and reaching nearly halfway to the top of the sky.

It is essential that your view is not spoiled by nearby streetlights, parking lot lights, or dusk-to-damn insecurity lights, nor any city to the west (Feb-Apr) or east (Aug-Oct).  Give your eyes a few minutes to adjust to the darkness.  Slowly sweeping your eyes back and forth from southwest to northwest (Feb-Apr) or northeast to southeast (Aug-Oct) will help you spot the zodiacal light band.  Once spotted, you should be able to see it without moving your head.

On the February, March, and April evenings listed above, the zodiacal light is best seen right at the end of evening twilight, and remains visible for an hour or so after that.

On the August, September, and October mornings listed above, the zodiacal light is best seen about an hour or so before the beginning of morning twilight, right up to the beginning of morning twilight.

Enjoy!