The day before my birthday, January 30th you and I will have an opportunity to experience a rare event.
The moon will be the 2nd new moon in the same month.
It's also going to be a Super Moon, which is why it's known at the "Black Moon".
It's also going to be a Super Moon, which is why it's known at the "Black Moon".
What is so unusual is that this moon can only be seen during the day.
The black moon is seen as an omen of change.
This year we certainly have a lot of space phenomena.
Recently, due to the publishing of John Hagee’s most recent book, Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change there has been a peek of interest in “four blood moons” as a sign that relates to end times in biblical prophecy.
This year we certainly have a lot of space phenomena.
Recently, due to the publishing of John Hagee’s most recent book, Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change there has been a peek of interest in “four blood moons” as a sign that relates to end times in biblical prophecy.
The premise for Hagee’s book is that key events in Jewish history have occurred around the time of Jewish holy days when lunar eclipse blood moons have also appeared.Pastor Hagee says that the four blood moons that are to appear and coincide with the Jewish holidays of Passover and Sukkot in 2014 and 2015 because of lunar eclipses may constitute a sign for important end time events.
Astronomers know that a blood moon can occur when a lunar eclipse makes the moon appear red as it passes behind the Earth’s shadow and the moon glows red. On the other hand, we must not forget that the moon can also appear red when it is low on the horizon at sunset or sunrise, or when there is a lot of dust in the atmosphere.
Pastor Hagee’s assertion is that these four moons signal the coming fulfillment of Biblical prophecies that relate to the day of the Lord and the return of Jesus Christ.
However, are the red moons a sign of the end times or does scripture indicate that the red moons are the result of something else happening during the end times?
In the ancient world the word “star” could refer to any luminous body in the sky, be it a meteorite (a shooting star) or comet (a hairy star) or planet (a wandering star), etc. Further, in the ancient world the term “host of heaven” could also refer to the objects of heaven such as comets (Deuteronomy 4:19).
The blood or red moons that Pastor Hagee says the Bible is referring to do not occur because of lunar eclipses, instead they speak of end time events that occur because of stars i.e. comets falling and impacting the Earth.
Cometary impacts would cause great earthquakes, pillars or columns of smoke to rise from impact sites, and put huge amounts of dust into the atmosphere that would quickly circulate worldwide. In turn, this tremendous amount of dust would result in the moon appearing red or being darkened, and the sun being darkened.
It is believed that the cosmic impacts that lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs put so much dust into the atmosphere that the Earth laid in darkness for over a year.
Impacts raising dust into the atmosphere would cause phenomena that are not unlike a volcano putting dust into the atmosphere and causing red moons and sunsets, but millions of times more dust would go up into the atmosphere from a cosmic impact.
It is interesting to note that after a small cometary fragment struck Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 it was reported that the whole northern sky appeared to be on fire. On October 25, 2007, there was not a lunar eclipse, but Nick Carlson took a picture of a full red moon over San Diego that glowed red because of the smoke and dust particles in the sky over San Diego that night.
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Mark your calendars: the first in a series of interesting occultations of Saturn by the Moon for 2014 starts this weekend.
The year 2014 features 11 occultations of the planet Saturn by the Moon, and there are 23 total for 2014 of every planet except Neptune and Jupiter.
An occultation occurs when one foreground celestial object completely obscures another. Technically, a total solar eclipse is an occultation of the Sun by the Moon, although it’s never referred to as such. The term finds modern usage mainly for the blocking of stars and planets by the Moon.
Very occasionally, an asteroid or planet can occult a distant star as well.
And yes, the modern astronomical term “occultation” traces its hoary roots back to the days when astronomy was intertwined with the pseudoscience of astrology. To this day, the term still makes some folks wonder if astronomers are secretly casting horoscopes.
Trust us, you’re still on a solid astronomical footing to use the term “occultation.”
Unfortunately, the January 25th occultation of Saturn by the Moon will only grace part of Antarctica, southern Argentina and Chile, and the Falkland Islands post-sunrise. The rest of us still will see a very photogenic pass of Saturn near the waning crescent Moon on the morning of Saturday, January 25th. The Moon will pass just about a degree — two times its apparent width — south of Saturn for northern hemisphere observers.
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January 2014 is also notable for having two New Moons, an occurrence informally known as a Black Moon. This occurs again this year in March, and February 2014 is devoid of a New Moon. February is the only month that can be “missing a Moon phase” as it’s the only one shorter the synodic period of 29.5 days, in which the Moon returns to like phase.
In the telescope, Saturn will present a +0.8 magnitude disk 16” across (38” with rings from tip-to-tip). Saturn’s rings are tipped open to our line of sight by about 22 degrees in 2014, and are widening towards a maximum of 27 degrees in 2016 through 2017. If you have an equatorial telescope with tracking capability, it may be possible this weekend to follow Saturn up into the daytime sky. Though Saturn isn’t quite bright enough to see in the daytime unaided, it might just be possible to spy using binoculars on the 25th using the nearby crescent Moon as a guide.
Saturn is a tough daytime target to be sure, but it’s not impossible to acquire with a little skill and patience.
The current cycle of occultations of Saturn began on December 1st, 2013 and ends on November 22nd, 2014. The cycle will move progressively northward through the year.
The Moon and Saturn put on a repeat performance over almost the same exact location (this time in darkness) on April 17th, 2014, and the best event in the cycle for North America will be the August 31st daytime occultation of Saturn by the waxing crescent Moon.
Now for the wow factor of what you’re seeing. On Saturday morning, the Moon is just over 371,000 kilometres distant, or a little over a light second away. Saturn is over four thousand times more remote at just over 10.1 astronomical units (AUs) distant, which works out to 1.5 billion kilometres, or over 83 light minutes away. And although the Moon is over a 112 times larger in apparent diameter than Saturn as seen from the Earth, the globe of Saturn is actually over 34 times bigger.
And though we’ve been to the Moon lots since the dawn of the Space Age, only two spacecraft (Voyagers 1 and 2) have made brief flybys of the ringed world, and only one – Cassini – has orbited it. Note that China’s Chang’e-3 lander and rover are about to experience their second sunset this weekend as well from the lunar surface since landing on the Moon last month.
And although lots of planets get occulted by the Moon in 2014, no stars brighter than +1st magnitude lie in its path. In fact, the next cycle of bright star occultations by the Moon doesn’t resume until the Moon meets Aldebaran in January 29th, 2015.
There are, however, over a 100 lesser events involving the Moon occulting naked eye stars worldwide in 2014. Two such events occur this week as well, when the 48% illuminated Moon occults the +4.5th magnitude star Lambda Virginis for west-central South America on the morning of January 24th, and the occultation of the +2.8th magnitude star Alpha Librae (Zubenelgenubi) for central Asia on January 25th.
Don't miss these celestial events, be a witness!
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Sources: http://www.universetoday.com/108212/the-moon-meets-saturn-in-the-dawn-this-weekend/#ixzz2rnyVUNGV http://blogs.christianpost.com/comets-of-god/four-blood-moons-19804/
Or it could be that after 5,000 years we just have a LOT of holidays. Having a random calendar date hit a Jewish holiday is as difficult as throwing a rock into a Republican Convention and hitting a white guy. Also we use a lunar-solar calendar so certain parts of the month are meant to be coordinated with lunar phases by design.
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