A supermoon occurs when thefull mooncoincides with the moon being at the point in its orbit within 90% of its closest approach to Earth, called perigee. This makes the moon appear slightly brighter and closer than usual, though the difference is difficult to notice with the naked eye. The ...
You can see a new moon when it crosses the face of the sun during a solar eclipse. New moons occur approximately once every month because that's roughly how long it takes for the moon to orbit Earth. But because the moon's orbit is slightly tilted relative to Earth's orbit around the...
When was the solar cycle discovered?The Solar Cycle:The solar cycle refers to the 11-year cycle of magnetic storm activity within the core of the sun. When the activity peaks, the magnetic poles of the sun reverses. Each cycle begins when storm activity is at its minimum....
It’s said the term was first coined by Galileo in 1623 and is derived from ‘Aurora’, the goddess of the dawn and ‘Boreas’, the northern wind personified. What are the Northern Lights? The northern lights and their counterpart in the southern hemisphere appear when highly charged solar ...
The Year of the Snake occurs every 12 years in the Chinese zodiac cycle. Other Snake years include 1953, 1965, 1989, 2001 and 2013. For those born in these years, 2025 is their Benmingnian. It is considered inauspicious, so people usually wear red underwear and socks to ward off evil ...
Because Spica lies so close to the ecliptic — the plane of the solar system, along which we see the Sun, Moon, and planets appear to move in the sky — it is often occulted by the Moon. This morning there is no occultation, but our Moon will pass 0.3° due south of Spica at 8...
The next solar and geomagnetic cycle has been predicted using the Ap and the extensive aa index databases (Thompson, Solar Phys. 148 (1993) 383). Current real-time predictions use the Ap index. Though the correlation between the two indices is at the 0.9 level, the aa and Ap index do ...
Shortly, the wings fill with blood, and the beautiful, colorful butterfly spreads its wings and flies away. After a few weeks, this adult butterfly lays her eggs, and the cycle begins all over again. This is just one example of the wonders of nature. Look around the natural world, ...
encased parts of North America, Asia, and Europe. We commonly know it as the “Ice Age.” But geologists call it the Last Glacial Maximum. That’s because it’s the most recent time that ice reached such a huge extent, and “ice...
This solstice marks the official beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, occurring when Earth arrives at the point in its orbit where the North Pole is at its maximum tilt (about 23.5 degrees) toward the Sun, resulting in the longest day and shortest night of the calendar year. (By...