ARIETID METEOR SHOWER: One of the strongest meteor showers of the year is underway now. Don't get excited. It peaks in broad daylight. The annual Arietid meteor shower, caused by debris from Comet 96P/Machholz, sends 60 meteors per hour streaking across noon-blue sky on June 8th through 12th. To see it, you have to be a radar. Amateur radio operators, this is a good time to try meteor burst communications.
SUNRISE SOLAR ECLIPSE: When the sun rises over New York City on Thursday morning, June 10th, this is what it will look like:
The rising sun will be partially blocked by the Moon, creating an unforgettable sunrise solar eclipse. Chris Cook took the picture while visiting New York during a similar eclipse in Nov. 2013. "Thursday's sunrise in New York will look almost exactly the same," he says.
The eclipse zone includes the northeastern USA and Canada, parts of Greenland, Russia, and much of Europe. Our friends at GreatAmericanEclipse.com have created an excellent set of visibility maps.
This is not a total eclipse. It’s annular, which means the Moon is a fraction too small to cover the entire solar disk. Even when the Moon is dead-center in front of the sun, a little bit of sun will stick out around the Moon's circumference. Depending on where you are in the eclipse zone, you'll see either a "ring of fire" or a crescent-shaped sun. Looking directly at these forms is tempting, but be careful. Even a sliver of exposed sun can be blindingly bright. Always use ISO-approved eclipse viewing glasses.
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THE SPACE WRENCH FOR FATHER'S DAY: It's the Father's Day gift for the dad who has everything: The Space Wrench. This unique tool has just returned to Earth after a flight to the stratosphere onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloon. Here it is floating 101,243 feet above Mono Lake on June 3rd:
You can have it for $97.95. Made of chrome vanadium steel, this wench is tough enough to parachute from the edge of space and still tighten a nut more than an inch wide. Imperial and metric scales allow it to be used by mechanics in the Klingon Empire and the Federation.
Each wrench comes with a greeting card showing the tool in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere.
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