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All the astronomy links you will ever need:
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Links
NASA Science News has a sightings map
CNN Coverage- July 24, 2001
2001 Space Weather Headlines

Shuttle UFO?!
When the Space Shuttle reentered the atmosphere on July 25, during a relatively rare night landing, viewers in Central America reported a burining airplane crashing, and one state in Mexico actually sent out boats to search the ocean!

Mars reached opposition to the sun on June 13, and closest approach to the earth on June 21- closer than it has been since 1988!  The fact that June 21 is also the date of the "solstice eclipse" is just a coincidence, or is it??

Jupiter reaches conjunction with the sun on June 11, the same week that Mars is at opposition to the sun, so that means Mars and Jupiter are also at opposition to each other!  An observer on Mars would see Jupiter pass near the sun as we will from earth that week.  You can watch the planet Jupiter track across the camera field of the SOHO wide field coronagraph.  Mercury will also pass conjunction with the sun a few days later on June 16.

In case you believe that the "new" images were deliberately doctored by NASA to cover up the evidence of aliens at Cydonia, try this simple test- squint your eyes or take your glasses off.  With the images slightly out of focus, you can see that the dark and light areas are the same, and the 2001 image on the right is identical to the 1976 image, only sharper.

The new Cydonia picture was selected as the Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 28, 2001

Dust Storm! (July 2001)

Just as obervers were getting their best views, a giant duststorm engulfed the entire planet in June and July 2001!
Sky & Telescope News Archive

But that is not all!  Stonehenge sits on the plain of Salisbury 2 degrees of longitude west of Greenwich.  The stone temple was built in 3200 B.C. as an "eclipse computer" and  its site was chosen at the intersection of alignments of other sacred stone sites in Britain.  At 12:03 GMT On June 21, at the exact moment of maximum eclipse in the southern hemisphere, the sun and moon will be DUE SOUTH of Stonehenge!

The summer solstice, aka "Midsummer's Eve" was a pagan holiday for the Druids and for Wiccans.  It is one of the four cardinal points that determine the astronomical seasons.

Every nineteen years the phases of the moon occur on the same day in the solar calendar, and if there was an eclipse nineteen years ago, there is an 80 percent chance that there will also be an eclipse this year.  This nineteen year cycle is called the "Metonic Cycle" after the astronomer Meton who first recorded it in ancient times.

Exactly nineteen years ago to the day, on June 21, 1982, a similar eclipse occurred aligned along the same meridian.  That was the same day Princess Diana gave birth to Prince William in a hospital in London.  All the major events in Diana's life coincided with solar eclipses!  Diana was named after the goddess of the hunt and the moon, and an eclipse occurs when the moon is aligned with the sun and the earth at the nodes of its orbit around the earth.

Only twice in the last century did two solar eclipses occur in the same month of the solar calendar.  In July 2000, a solar eclipse occurred on July 1 and on July 31, with a lunar eclipse on July 16.  The same pattern had occurred nineteen years earlier in 1981.  Incredibly, July 1, 1981 was Princess Diana's 20th birthday, and July 31 was the date of the royal wedding seen around the world!

The car crash in Paris in September 1997... do I even need to say it?  Two days after a solar eclipse!

It seems that William's birth, and his fate, are also entwined with eclipses.  Born during a solar eclipse, his mother died after a solar eclipse, and now on his 19th birthday, another eclipse!  There will also be an eclipse on his 38th birthday in the year 2020!  Will he be sitting on the throne of England by then?

There is also another member of "royalty" who was born during a solar eclipse and planetary alignment!
Can you guess who it is?

In any year, there are only four or five eclipses, occurring approximately every six months in groups of two or three called "eclipse seasons."  Most eclipses are partial- if there is a total eclipse of the sun or moon, it will always be accompanied by a partial eclipse of the other body two weeks before or after.  In rare cases, as in July 2000 mentioned above, three eclipses can occur together- when this happens it is always a total eclipse in the middle which is "bracketed" by a partial eclipse two weeks before and after.

The entire pattern repeats on the nineteen year Metonic cycle.  In any nineteen year period there are always no fewer than 4 * 19 = 76 eclipses of one kind or another.  The dates of the eclipses are distributed through the 52 week calendar year.  Therefore there is a 100 percent chance that an eclipse of some kind will occur during the same week as your birthday sometime in the next 19 years!  In an average lifetime, the chances that an eclipse occurs more than once within 3 days of  your birthday are also 100 percent!  The chance that an eclipse occurs on your exact birthday are actually quite good!

BUT what are the chances that more than one event in any person's life would take place on the exact day of a solar eclipse?  The chance that one person's birthday, the date of their marriage, and the birth of their first child ALL OCCUR on the same day as a solar eclipse are very small!

Related Topics
History of the Gregorian Calendar and Leap Year
When Did The "Millennium" Really Begin?

More Solstice Eclipse Info from Sky & Telescope
Links to Other Eclipse Sites
 

Links to Eclipse Photos and Eyewitness Reports...
African Eclipse Reports from Sky & Telescope
Eclipse Gallery from Spaceweather.com
Astronomy Picture of the Day for June 22, 2001

Two years in a row, a comet named "LINEAR" had a brief unexpected brightening as it got close to the sun, and then broke into pieces as its nucleus disintegrated.  This year, Comet LINEAR C2001/A2 has split into three parts just before reaching perihelion in May 2001.  During the month of June, the comet is predicted to remain near naked eye brightness, but will be observable only from the earth's southern hemisphere.  By the last week of June and first week of July, the comet will be closer to the celestial equator and able to be seen by northern hemisphere observers. The comet reaches closest distance from the earth of June 30, 2001, at which time it will be also at quadrature (90 degrees) from the sun.  The geometry should be good for the comet to be visible in binoculars for most of the summer.
Comet Coincidences From Years Past
More Cosmic Coincidences

Comet LINEAR C2001/A2 Ephemeris for June 2001
Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 21, 2001
Astronomy Picture of the Day for July 30, 2000
Comet Images from Meteors.com
Sky & Telescope News Archive

CNN Coverage:
May 21, 2001: Crumbling Comet = Cosmic Deja Vu?
May 17, 2001: Autopsy Report on last year's comet demise

Hubble Space Telescope/ Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
August 2000- HST Finds the missing pieces of comet LINEAR
July 28, 2000- HST Sees Comet LINEAR Blow It's Top

During the entire month of June, the comet's estimated visual brightness continues to be brighter than magnitiude 5, which means it can be seen with the unaided eye from dark sky sites and dark-adapted eyes.  In binoculars, it should be spectacular no matter what happens. In early June it can be seen only from the southern hemisphere but by month's end will be well placed for northern observers. In the sky before dawn during the first week of July 2001, the comet will be located off the end of a "string" of planets in the morning sky!  That's a reason to get up an hour before sunrise!

IMAGINE what the Druids would have thought if they had seen such an event in Neolithic times?!?!  An eclipse on the solstice and the birthday of the crown Prince would be ominous enough, now add a ghostly comet apparition with three heads and a long tail!!

Links
APOD June 25, 2001

Are You Ready?
Will the third comet LINEAR become the "Great Christmas Comet" of 2001?

On June 21, 2001, Mars was at its closest approach to the earth since 1998,
which occurred only nine days after that planet's opposition to the sun as seen from earth,
and the earth and moon are perfectly aligned in the first total solar eclipse of the new millennium!

Click hereto access the Planet Data Chart from HeavensAbove.com.
Click here to access all the current SOHO spacecraft live images.

Compare my version with the 'real' solar system diagram for June 13, 2001.

 

Check it out!  The planets Mars, Earth, Mercury, Sun, and Jupiter really are
aligned!!  They are "upside down" compared to my earlier diagram because in
the solar system map "north is up" and since the sun is at its northernmost
point on the ecliptic (relative to earth's poles) it appears ABOVE the
earth- and Jupiter is above the sun because it is 'behind' the sun at
superior conjunction.

The NEW detail that I learn from this diagram that I had NOT realized before
is that VENUS which is at greatest elongatoin from the sun that week is
aligned with MERCURY!  An observer ON MERCURY would see VENUS at exactly 90
degrees from the sun or "quadrature"!

Where is Comet Linear in this diagram?  I found this page that includes a chart
of the comet's location in the solar system...

Please email me with any questions or comments! Thanks!

In the year 2000 whenever there were solar flares and geomagnetic storms, events in the news took a bizarre turn, and a relatively minor incident, got blown out of proportions in the headlines and turned into an international incident.  It was as if when the earth's magnetic field was disturbed by radiation from the sun, the electronic mass media went into a feeding frenzy, and the television viewing public, the consumers of mass information, were in a hypnotic trance!

For example, last year on April 6, 2000, a geomagnetic storm caused the rare red-colored Aurora Borealis to be seen all over North America...

The same week, the Elian Gonzales saga reached a culmination after his father arrived in the USA and the Justice Department extracted Elian from the home of his Miami relatives by force during Easter week.  The aurora described above took place on the first night Elian's father spent in Washington DC, and the sky turned red from the north to Florida!  During Easter weekend when the crisis reached a culmination, there was a geomagnetic storm in progress!

Then in November 2000, a series of geomagnetic disturbances coincided with the US Presidential election and the recount of the votes in Florida!

This year, from mid-March through the end of April, solar flares triggered geomagnetic storms that caused GPS receivers to be off by hundreds of miles when calculating positions!

Here are links to news articles about the solar flares and aurora borealis from March & April 2001:
Astronomy Picture of the Day: April 2, April 6
Aurora Galleries:  March 31,  April 12, April 17
Sky & Telescope Astronomy News Page
CNN Space Article 4/11/01- New Solar Flare May Trigger Geomagnetic Storm
Gallery of Aurora Photos

Aurora Alert- June 2001!
Look at these pictures of the aurora borealis taken June 1 from North Dakota!

More  Incredibly Strange Coincidences 2001.