Ripe time for stargazing

Bill Knight column for 12-12, 13 or 14, 2019

As shooting-star shows approach from the heavens this week and next, I recall having never noticed a falling star until I was about 17, when a buddy and I were lying on our backs on a spillway outside of town, looking at the sky and an outstanding meteor flashed across the sky, blazing from north to south with a brilliance that left me speechless and immobile.

My pal reacted differently, leaping to his feet as if to run to our friends to tell them because everyone should see such marvels.

I quietly realized I’d missed out on years of watching for such sights and maybe better appreciating our place in the universe.

Such perspectives and fun can come from stargazing, which can become a long-lasting fascination with the night skies, and it doesn’t require expertise, telescope or observatory.

However, it does need timing, and Friday night offers a splendid opportunity for the inquisitive to see some celestial wonders, whether muted streaks or lines briefly brighter than anything.

A meteor is a piece of a comet or asteroid orbiting the Sun that enters Earth’s atmosphere and either burns up or causes surrounding gases to glow, and this weekend, one of the strongest meteor showers of the year, the Geminids, could bring between 20 and 150 visible meters an hour, sky-watchers say.

“For solar eclipses, I’m a good-luck charm, but I’m a bit of a meteor-shower jinx,” laughs Sheldon Schafer, Director Emeritus of the Peoria Riverfront Museum’s planetarium and program chair of the Peoria Astronomical Society (PAS). “It’s sort of the luck of the draw.”

Besides timing, watching a meteor shower depends on the sky, from cloud cover and “light pollution” from towns and rural pole lights, to phases of the Moon.

“The Moon will be full the night before, so it’ll be prominent,” Schafer says, “but you can position yourself to look elsewhere in the sky and still see meteors.”

For this month’s meteor-shower shows, Schafer recommends waiting until late – actually, early Saturday morning.

“The best time is a couple of hours before dawn [about 7:15 a.m. Saturday],” he says. “Drive out to some county road with zero traffic and lie on your back and just wait.”

Forecast temperatures may be chilly, so comfort may be key to witnessing these warming wonders.

“I always park on a side road next to corn fields and bring a recliner and a down sleeping bag,” he says. “Then, you just look up.”

(You might bring a little hot chocolate, too.)

Schafer, who’s taught astronomy at Bradley University since 1980, has other suggestions for people curious about the sky or considering stargazing:

* “Learn how to use your smartphone to do some astrophotography, or star photography. Go on YouTube, where there are a bunch of tutorials, and you can find simple ways to start;

* “look at constellations, especially Orion – which most people can easily find because of the three stars making up Orion’s ‘belt’;

* “one of Orion’s brighter stars is Betelgeuse [above and to the left of the belt]. It’s considered an old star that could become a nova in our lifetimes. If it does, it would become so bright it’d be visible in the daytime for three months. Of course, it might not happen for 10,000 years, but statistically the odds of it happening in the next year are about the same as winning the Pick 4 Lottery, and a lot of people play that.”

If clouds or other interference impedes this weekend’s sights, December offers another chance to see shooting stars, as the last meteor shower of 2019, the Ursids, will occur the night of Dec. 21, when about 10 meteors an hour should be present.

You never know how the experience of seeing falling stars (even while seeing your own breath) can affect your attitude, even your life. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg once remembered, “My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid, and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night … I didn't know what he wanted to do. He wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car, and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky.”