Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

seigo­nie.mo­hammed@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go may miss to­day’s to­tal so­lar eclipse, but sky­watch­ers can still look up for an event­ful Au­gust fea­tur­ing shoot­ing stars, a pa­rade of plan­ets and, lat­er this month, a par­tial lu­nar eclipse vis­i­ble from the Caribbean.

The ce­les­tial ac­tion be­gins be­fore sun­rise on Au­gust 12, when six plan­ets, name­ly Jupiter, Mer­cury, Mars, Uranus, Sat­urn and Nep­tune, will be above the hori­zon as part of a plan­e­tary align­ment.

Mars and Sat­urn are ex­pect­ed to be among the eas­i­er plan­ets to spot with the naked eye, while Uranus and Nep­tune are too faint to see with­out binoc­u­lars or a tele­scope. Mer­cury and Jupiter may prove more dif­fi­cult as morn­ing twi­light bright­ens the sky.

Hours lat­er, at­ten­tion will turn to a to­tal so­lar eclipse that will dark­en skies across parts of the North­ern Hemi­sphere.

But be­fore you grab those eclipse glass­es and head out­side in T&T, there is a catch: the so­lar eclipse will not be vis­i­ble from the Caribbean.

The nar­row path of to­tal­i­ty will cross north­ern Rus­sia, Green­land, Ice­land and Spain. Peo­ple out­side those ar­eas, in­clud­ing those in T&T, can in­stead fol­low livestreams of the event on­line. To­tal­i­ty will last up to two min­utes and 18 sec­onds.

The bet­ter show for lo­cal stargaz­ers comes af­ter night­fall.

The Per­seid me­te­or show­er peaks on the night of Au­gust 12 in­to the ear­ly hours of Au­gust 13, with around 40 to 60 me­te­ors per hour pos­si­ble un­der dark, clear skies. The new moon will pro­vide par­tic­u­lar­ly favourable con­di­tions this year be­cause there will be less moon­light wash­ing out fainter me­te­ors.

For the best chance of catch­ing a “shoot­ing star”, find a safe, dark and open lo­ca­tion away from street­lights and oth­er bright sources. Put away the phone for a while too, since bright screens in­ter­fere with your eyes ad­just­ing to dark­ness.

Me­te­or ac­tiv­i­ty can come in bursts, so pa­tience mat­ters. Ten qui­et min­utes could sud­den­ly be fol­lowed by sev­er­al me­te­ors streak­ing over­head.

And T&T gets an­oth­er rea­son to look up lat­er this month.

Dur­ing the night of Au­gust 27 in­to Au­gust 28, a par­tial lu­nar eclipse will be vis­i­ble across the Caribbean. At its peak, over 90 per cent of the Moon will en­ter Earth’s shad­ow, po­ten­tial­ly giv­ing part of it a red­dish ap­pear­ance.

NASA ex­plains the colour this way: “It’s as if all the world’s sun­ris­es and sun­sets are pro­ject­ed on­to the Moon.”