Technologies

Meteor Shower Season Heats Up With Daytime Sextantid Show

Earth is set to pass through a series of dusty clouds of space debris from Halley’s Comet and others that promise to light up night skies.

August’s Perseid meteor shower may be the most well known of the year, but it’s the last quarter of the year that brings the most shooting-star and fireball action to night skies.

As of this week, both the Orionid and Southern Taurid meteor showers are active and the little known Daytime Sextantid shower is peaking now.

The Sextantids are often ignored for obvious reasons because they’re oriented in such a way that they’re typically impacting our atmosphere during the day and therefore washed out by sunlight. However lucky observers may be able to catch one in the hour before dawn, when they can sometimes be seen shooting straight upward from the eastern horizon. This unusual shower peaks Wednesday, making Thursday morning the ideal time to go looking for the rare upward-shooting meteor.

Fortunately, the pre-dawn hours are also a good time to look for the other meteor showers active now.

While the Orionids aren’t set to peak until around Oct. 20, they still add some shooting stars to each night’s sky until then. The Taurids, on the other hand, don’t have a very defined peak and are forecast to be visible at a rate of around two per hour over the next several weeks.

Adding to the celestial drama is the Taurids’ reputation for delivering a number of bright fireballs streaking through the sky.

“In 2022, the Earth passed through a swarm of Taurid fireballs,” writes Bob Lunsford for the American Meteor Society. “This year we are further from this swarm but will still encounter some fireball activity.”

The Taurids can be traced to debris from the comet 2P/Encke, while the Orionids are connected to the leavings of the famed Halley’s Comet, which visits the inner solar system only about every 75 years. The celebrity snowball won’t be back until 2061.

Two distinct clouds from Halley’s Comet are responsible for both the Orionids each October and the Eta Aquariids meteor shower in May.

How to see the celestial show

When the Orionids peak between Oct 20 and 22, the conditions should be nearly perfect, especially with the moonless sky on the morning of the 22nd in the hours just before dawn. Most nights, the area near the constellation of Orion the Hunter where the Orionids appear to radiate from will be highest in the sky around 2 a.m. But it may be possible to see the meteors anytime between midnight and dawn. The closer you get to dawn, the better your chance of seeing one of those vertical Sextantids as well.

The Orionids are known for zipping through the sky at relatively high speed and often leaving long trains that can linger for a second or two.

During those peak mornings, the number of Orionid meteors will suddenly increase to between 10 and 20 per hour, but sometimes Earth passes through a particularly dense pocket of debris and those rates shoot up to 50 to 70, rivaling the Perseids.

While it’s worth marking the Orionids’ peak on your calendar, you might be able to catch a handful of meteors and a fireball on any given night over the next several weeks.

If you have at least an hour free on a night with clear skies and a location away from light pollution, all you need to do is find an area with a broad view of the night sky. Allow at least 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness and then just relax, lie back and watch.

See the Perseid meteor shower make a celestial scene worldwide

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You’ll hear seasoned skywatchers talking about orienting yourself to face the radiant of a particular meteor shower. The radiant is the section of the sky from which certain meteors will appear to radiate outward. Meteor showers are usually named for a constellation within that radiant, so the Orionids are named for Orion.

If you can locate Orion in the sky and orient yourself in that direction, it might boost your viewing experience slightly. But the reality is that most amateurs won’t notice a difference. It’s far more important to have dark skies away from light pollution and the widest view of the sky possible. While meteors might originate from a certain radiant, they go all over the sky from that point, so it really doesn’t matter much which way you face.

Plus, there are more than Orionids up there on most nights. There are also the aforementioned Taurids, smaller showers like the Anthelion and even sporadic meteors that aren’t part of defined showers.

So just plan for at least an hour outside, preferably between midnight and dawn, for the best chance to make it through lulls in activity and spotting a few meteors. Be sure to bring all you need to be comfortable that long: Blankets, snacks and drinks are a good idea. Good luck!

Technologies

Trump strikes deal with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets

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Technologies

Major League Baseball proposes shortening its regular season as it pushes for a salary cap

Major League Baseball proposed a return to a shorter 154-game regular season schedule as it attempts to convince players to approve a salary cap.

Major League Baseball proposed shortening its regular season to 154 games from 162 as it attempts to convince players to approve a salary cap in the league’s next collective bargaining agreement. The new shortened schedule would begin in 2029.

MLB’s CBA expires Dec. 1, after the conclusion of this season’s World Series. The most contentious issue is the introduction of a salary cap on players. MLB is the only major American sports league without a cap. The league has failed to convince the players’ union to adopt one in several previous CBA negotiations.

A 154-game season was used between 1904 and 1960, except for 1918 and 1919 when the schedule was abbreviated because of World War I. For the past 66 years, 162 regular season games has been the standard, though some seasons have been shortened.

Lopping off eight games “is good for player health, while also creating a new national broadcast window to showcase our most exciting teams and players,” MLB spokesman Glen Caplin said in a statement. “A shorter regular season unlocks making October even better for our fans — with fewer weekday afternoon games, a longer Division Series, and more opportunities to see the game’s best pitchers on the biggest stage.”

As part of the proposal, MLB wants to cement Monday as an exclusive broadcast window for one or two games to “increase national exposure for the sport.” The league could conceivably sell a package of Monday-only games to a streaming service looking to increase subscriber and advertising revenue. Every team not playing in the national game or games would have an off day.

Teams that play Monday would be off on Thursday, MLB said.

In addition to lowering the number of regular season games, MLB would extend the divisional round of the playoffs to seven games from five and would allow the higher-seeded teams in both the wild card round and in the divisional round to choose their lower-seeded opponent.

The Major League Baseball Players Association responded to the MLB’s proposed changes by claiming the league “once again made clear that all of its proposals are contingent on players’ agreement to a salary cap, a system that guts player rights and compensation, as well as its other anti-player proposals.”

An MLB spokesperson confirmed that Thursday’s proposed changes are contingent on adopting a cap – and a salary floor, which would force teams to spend a certain amount on players. Still, the MLBPA said it would review the proposed changes. “Players will weigh in on these proposals and we will respond at the bargaining table,” MLBPA said in a statement.

Technologies

Hurricane Isaias disrupts U.S. oil production in Gulf of Mexico, threatens refineries

The hurricane could tighten a fuel market that is already facing big disruptions from the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Hurricane Isaias is disrupting U.S. crude oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and could limit about 2% of the country’s refining capacity, at a time when fuel markets are already tight around the world.

Isaias is churning toward Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle as a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, and is expected to make landfall Friday night or early Saturday.

As of Thursday, oil companies had shut in about 1.3 million barrels per day, or roughly 63% of total U.S. production in the Gulf, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

The hurricane appeared to be veering away from the dense refining region in southern Louisiana near New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

But the storm could affect Chevron

“Of course, losing any refinery capacity when diesel supplies are at their lowest level for this time of year since the EIA began reporting in 1982 is not a good thing,” Lipow wrote in a Friday note, referring to the Energy Information Administration.

Chevron’s refinery at Pascagoula remains operational, spokesperson Ross Allen said Thursday. Vertex officials weren’t immediately available for comment about its Saraland refinery.

″The biggest risk to these two refineries are a loss of electricity or flooding damage,” Lipow wrote in a note Friday. If the refineries do shut down, it would take one to two weeks to restart them if they did not sustain damage, he said.

Refineries on the Gulf Coast are running at 95% of their capacity, so there is no slack in the system to make up for lost production, Lipow said.

Diesel prices have soared as the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East knock out refining capacity. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries forced Moscow to ban diesel exports. Iran and its Houthi allies have also attacked refineries in the Middle East.

U.S. refiners have stepped in to take advantage of wide profit margins to export diesel around the world, particularly to Europe.

In the past, fuel prices rose while crude prices fell during outages at Gulf refineries, said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners. That’s a result of those refineries not demanding crude and not producing fuel for consumers, Book told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday.

Lipow warned that tanker traffic will also be disrupted.

“Tankers will be delayed delivering crude oil to the refineries while other tankers are delayed loading gasoline, jet fuel and diesel out of the refineries,” the analyst said. “Florida will experience delays in receiving gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.”