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22/04/20/0013214 story

The Lyrid Meteor Shower Peaks April 21-22

posted by hubie on Wednesday April 20 2022, @07:33AM   
from the fallen-star-that's-what-you-are dept.

upstart writes:

The Lyrid meteor shower peaks April 21-22:

One of the oldest known meteor showers is gracing the night sky next week — coinciding with the celebration of our planet, known as Earth Day. There hasn't been a meteor shower in months, and the Lyrid shower marks the end of the drought.

[...] The Lyrid meteor shower lights up the night sky every year from around April 15 to 29, as particles shed from Comet 1861 G1 Thatcher. The comet last passed through the inner solar system in 1861 — and it will not return until 2276 due to its 415-year orbit.

[...] Lyrid meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Lyra the Harp, located near the well-known star Vega, giving the shower its name.

[...] The Lyrids meteor shower is predicted to peak at 4 UTC on Friday, April 22, according to EarthSky.

Unfortunately, this year, a bright waning moon will illuminate the sky during the shower, making it more difficult to spot shooting stars.

If you look directly at the radiant — the point where the meteors appear to be coming from, which will be in the constellation Lyra — the shooting stars will be short. To see longer and more spectacular meteors, it's better to look away.

Find yourself a dark spot and remember to Keep Looking Up!.

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Original Submission

• Earth Day is communist Earth Day is communist (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @09:50AM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @09:50AM (#1238401)

  The first Earth Day was declared on the centennial of Vladimir Lenin's birth.

  • Re:Earth Day is communist (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @12:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @12:24AM (#1238590)

    Troll seems to be correct -- I'm reversing the mod.
    https://cei.org/blog/is-earth-day-on-lenins-birthday-a-coincidence/ [cei.org]

    While it is entirely possible, and indeed probable, that Gaylord Nelson and other establishment greens did not deliberately pick Lenin’s birthday to celebrate Earth Day, I believe the young anti-capitalist students knew precisely what they were doing in selecting April 22. Was it sheer coincidence they would select Lenin’s 100th birthday—out of 365 days in the year—to celebrate the first Earth Day? I find it hard to believe.

    Most environmental economists of the time believed that only socialist countries would ably protect the environment, because the governments there were acting for the good of all mankind, while capitalists in the West cared only about profit maximization and not a whit about the environment. Thus it was no surprise that the conventional wisdom would turn a generation of young people towards socialism as the only way to protect the Earth.

    This idea arose for a number of reasons, but primarily because pollution and environmental degradation first became a visible problem in the capitalist West, where the Industrial Revolution had begun. Most critics of the free market, whether Marxists or modern environmentalists, claimed that environmental degradation was an inherent and inescapable problems of a system of production for profit and of private ownership.

    That assumption led to the widespread belief that environmental misuse would disappear if the state were to own all the means of production, and the economic system were driven not by individual profit seekers, but by professional managers acting in the public interest, producing for the good of all and taking all costs into consideration. If property and industry were state-owned, the state would ensure that the interests of the general public would be protected and the common good would be advanced.

    Lenin and the early communists did believe that environmental degradation would disappear under communism. And in fact, pollution and environmental degradation were “outlawed” in the constitutions of most communist countries. Thus it was little surprise that the youth of the nascent environmental movement would view Lenin and socialism as the path to preserving the planet.

    But throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as more and more cracks opened in the Iron Curtain, economists and journalists were able to visit the communist countries and reported discovering a degree of environmental degradation far beyond that present in the West—from the gold dome of Sigismund Chapel of Wawel Cathedral in Cracow dissolving from acid rain to the drying up of the Aral Sea. Yet, the socialist environmental paradigm endured.

    A decade later as the Bamboo Curtain began to crumble the same conundrum was discovered in China.
    ......

    Linked blog is an interesting read.

    Parent

• ... meteor shower "lights up" the night sky ... meteor shower "lights up" the night sky (Score: 2) by TrentDavey on Wednesday April 20 2022, @05:15PM (1 child)

  by TrentDavey (1526) on Wednesday April 20 2022, @05:15PM (#1238499)

  No. No, it does nothing of the sort.

  • Re:... meteor shower "lights up" the night sky (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:19PM (#1238582)

    It's *literally* true (from the word "literature"), not *actually* true.

    Parent