TERRE HAUTE —
August should be national hammock month.
The night sky turns into an astronomical kaleidoscope in the year’s eighth month. And, there is no better way to gaze at it all than supine (flat on your back) in a hammock. No remote control or iPhone is necessary. Humans are powerless to start or stop celestial displays, anyway. Just exhale and look up. The heavens will take care of the rest.
The best moments to be a hammock-bound amateur astronomer arrive during the overnight hours of this Friday and Saturday. That’s when the Perseid meteor shower — the largest and most reliable annual meteor shower — reaches its peak. Thin flares of light streak across the sky, adding movement to the still glow of the stars. On average, 90 meteors per hour are visible, in the right conditions.
“The Perseid is probably the most spectacular and the most famous,” said Richard Ditteon, professor of physics at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and director of its Oakley Observatory.
Thus, it’s worth staying up late to see. Brew some coffee. The optimum viewing times for this year’s Perseid are estimated to be around 2 a.m. both nights.
To the first-timer, the term “meteor shower” may conjure images of Armageddon. Rest assured, boulders do not hurtle toward Earth, raining fire down upon us this weekend.
The streaking images during the Perseid are indeed meteors, but as tiny as grains of sand. “If you get a boulder,” Ditteon said of meteor sizes, “you’re going to get something that’s visible [even] in daylight.”
Instead, the August event involves much smaller objects. “What you’re seeing is debris left over from a comet named Swift-Tuttle,” Ditteon explained. “It just so happens, the Earth passes through that debris cloud every August.” The debris from the comet’s tail gets more dense as the planet bisects the middle of the cloud, which is why the monthlong Perseid sparkles brightest in mid-August.
Despite their granular size, those space particles enter Earth’s atmosphere at 40,000 to 50,000 miles per second, burning along the way and then vaporizing. This particular meteor shower gets its name because it appeared to radiate from the constellation Perseus, according to the popular astronomy website www.space.com. In Greek mythology, Perseus beheaded Medusa, whose snake-filled hair was so hideous it turned to stone anyone who laid eyes upon it. Eyeing the Perseid meteor shower involves no such danger. A few tips help, though.
This year’s Perseid peak might be a bit less brilliant because the moon will be full and bright. “That [lunar illumination] makes it more difficult to view the fainter objects,” Ditteon said. Nonetheless, meteor-gazers likely will see more activity than on any other nights in 2011. The ideal locations would be miles from pervasive artificial lights, especially around downtown Terre Haute or commercial areas. “Get as far away from Kmart as you can,” Ditteon said, suggesting spots in the countryside.
Once you’ve chosen a location, look toward the northeast (because they tend to come from that direction), but don’t focus on one point, he added. Rather, stare at the sky as you would the entire field from a top-row seat in a major-league baseball park. Rely on your peripheral vision to spot the meteors, which occur randomly in various parts of the sky and often in bunches. Binoculars make it easier to spot fainter meteors but limit a broader field of view.
Backyard astronomy is tougher in the 21st century because artificial lights are stronger and more prevalent. “That’s one of the bad things about our modern society,” Ditteon said. “We’ve got a lot of light pollution. The average Joes don’t know how beautiful the night sky can be.”
Ditteon has studied space extensively. A native of Anderson, he worked on NASA’s Viking program, which sent an unmanned probe to Mars in the 1970s. He’s taught at Rose-Hulman for more than a quarter-century, and has guided the observatory since the early 1990s. Inside that facility is a Ritchey-Chretien telescope sporting a lens a half-meter in diameter. When the college’s classes resume Sept. 1, Ditteon will be educating young engineers on the activity in space.
For us average Joes, the August meteor shower gives us our astronomy lesson and catches our eyes. (If we keep them open late enough to see it all.) “People are just curious,” Ditteon said of fascination with astral phenomena, such as Perseid. “They want to know what’s going on.”
My layman’s advice — find a hammock and just open those eyelids.
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
News Columns
Related Photos
-
Mark Bennett
Discussion
MARK BENNETT: This is the perfect time to lie on your back staring at the sky
- News Columns
-
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
-
MARK BENNETT: A lesson to be learned from Lugar’s loss
It can happen to one of the nation’s most revered, principled, effective, hard-working U.S. senators.
And, if it hasn’t already, it can happen to you. -
MARK BENNETT: Despite challenges, 2012 grads have youth, tenacity on their side
Let the doomsday crowd line up like a scene from “Animal House.”
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
-
MARK BENNETT: When it came to artwork, ‘Salty’ always kept it real
The depth of my visual art expertise mirrors that of Neil Young.
-
MARK BENNETT: Ongoing challenge: To keep Mother Nature from getting trashed
Soggy, mud-caked jeans and a formerly white T-shirt were my youngest son’s summertime uniform, as a kid.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
-
MARK BENNETT: How much of your spring break will be spent in the digital world?
It seems harsh to give folks a math assignment on the brink of spring break, but wisdom should never take a holiday, so here goes.
-
MARK BENNETT: Litter trashes scenery on first day of spring
A mop is an ironic piece of litter.
Someone once used it to keep floors spotless. When its utility ended, this cleaning device became trash on the edge of a road. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
-
MARK BENNETT: Manning leaves great memories for Colts fans
The emotion behind the words was obvious.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
-
MARK BENNETT: Year of the River a common interest for diverse entities
Water can compel people to get better acquainted.
-
MARK BENNETT: Our greatest president had some help from an obscure relative
On this Presidents Day week, historians weigh the impact of Washington, Jefferson and the Roosevelts on Americans’ lives.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Taking a road less traveled in this illogical life
If you can still recall reading the poetry of Robert Frost in your high school English class years ago, I imagine that you can conjure up a line or two from his “The Road Not Taken.”
-
MARK BENNETT: Electrician proves to be a real handyman for ad agency
On a billboard hovering over a busy stretch of U.S. 41 south of Terre Haute, the gritty hands of an electrician look 30 feet wide.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
-
MARK BENNETT: Super Bowl luck? His is mostly bad
I’ve learned to take a Seinfeld approach to Super Bowls.
In a flash of clairvoyance, Jerry excitedly reminded buddy George Costanza that “if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” -
MARK BENNETT: On the banks of the Wabash, a sculpture
Paul Dresser remembered his hometown at its best. Terre Haute should remember him the same way.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
-
MAUREEN HAYDEN: NFL players in ‘lock step with organized labor’
It’s not uncommon to see lawmakers in the Statehouse sporting American flag pins on their coat lapels.
-
MARK BENNETT: Hall-of-Famer Larkin delivered more than clutch hits
A logjam of kids swelled behind the first-base dugout in Riverfront Stadium.
-
STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Legislative labor bill banter goes on
No one really expected the start of the 2012 session of the Indiana General Assembly to be uneventful.
-
MARK BENNETT: Polian, Colts and Terre Haute were good for one another
Sentimentality seems alien in a discussion of Bill Polian.
That emotion rarely influenced his decisions in 14 seasons as the day-to-day boss of the Indianapolis Colts. He surely felt it, but seldom submitted to it. The NFL is a business, after all, with winning as its bottom line. Polian knew how to make that happen, and did. Anyone or anything threatening to divert the Colts from title contention could not linger. When it came to that mission, Polian functioned with all of the sentimentality of Joe Friday. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: A house with a hearth becomes a home
My son came home with a load of wood one day last week. Our little two-wheeled mowing trailer was groaning under the oppressive weight it held, its tires as pudgy as a glutton’s belly and its tongue nearly lapping the ground.
-
MAUREEN HAYDEN: Higher ed tops the list in a week full of headlines
There’s a lot that went on in and around the Indiana Statehouse last week that made headlines:
-
MARK BENNETT: Holiday season makes going to the mailbox fun again
Ants decided to set up a colony in our family’s mailbox last summer.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Persimmons planting a few seeds in our heads for winter
Surely, you have heard that we are in for a long, rough winter. The local weather forecasters are saying it; “The Farmer’s Almanac” is warning us of it; and now, the persimmons have confirmed it.
- More News Columns Headlines
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
Man Falls Off Crane, Dies After Police Standoff
Obama Honors Fallen Troops at Arlington Cemetery
Man in Crane at Texas College Says He's Armed
Raw Video: Deadly Explosion at Minn. Paper Mill
Raw Video: Cop Shoots Man Eating Another's Face
Unexpected Smog in Pristine National Parks
Air Canada Plane Makes Emergency Landing
Dairy Farm Uses Chiropractor to Help Cows
Romney Promises World's Strongest Military
Russia Condemns Ally Syria Over Massacre of 108
Raw Video: 19 Dead in Qatar Shopping Mall Fire
Obama Pays Tribute to Vietnam Veterans
Beryl Knocks Out Power in Florida
Raw Video: Earthquake Shakes Evacuees in Italy
Service Dogs Help Wash. Soldiers Battling PTSD
Beryl Makes Landfall on Florida Coast
Japan Farmers Plant, Seek Radiation-free Rice
Raw Video: Memorial Day Aboard Intrepid
Raw Video: Heckler Bursts in on Blair Testimony
UN Blames Syrian Forces for Shelling Houla
LeAnn Rimes Rocks Short Shorts
Drunk Women Breaking Into Houses: A New Trend?
Beyonce Shows Off 60 Pound Weight Loss at Concert
Gordon Ramsay Carried Off Field
Man Dies Getting Lap Dance
Bear cools off in Calif. family's pool
Kim Kardashian Claims Items Stolen from Her Luggage
Ep. 3: Chopped Desserts
Air Force dad surprises family at baseball game
Justin Bieber Wanted for Questioning for L.A. Scuffle
J.Lo and Marc's Friendly Reunion
Jet makes emergency landing after debris falls off
Cynthia Nixon Ties the Knot
Woman, 80, Falls Out of Skydive Harness Mid-Jump
Keira Reveals Engagement Ring
Dog runs alonside cyclists for 1,100 miles
Lady Gaga Cancels Indonesian Show After Threats
