The Way You Look Tonight Piano Tutorial

[Trine Gritz]

Joinin a night sky program from your own backyard! The Stars Above Haleakalā podcast features topics about the night skies we all share and the connections we forge between our Earth, our Universe, and each other. Each podcast focuses on a particular astronomy event for families to enjoy while they tune in to learn a little more about what they're experiencing. Your adventure to the stars (and beyond!) starts here!

Welcome to Gifts of the Geminids from Haleakalā National Park. I'm Ranger Laurel. Today, I'm going to be sharing with you a little bit about the how and the why of meteor showers, and in particular, the Geminids. It is December, which is a season for giving and gifts, and so it seems fitting to me that when we watch the meteor shower tonight, we'll explore some of the unique gifts that the Geminids can provide for us.

A few quick reminders before we dive in. If you are listening at Haleakalā National Park, or in any other protected or natural area, please use headphones or earbuds to listen to this program, so you don't disturb others around you or the wildlife. And also keep in mind social distancing guidelines. I know we're all very used to hearing it now, but please avoid crowding, if you're out in a public space have a face covering ready in case you can't maintain that social distancing. Above all, just respect your surroundings and be kind to your fellow stargazers.

This program has been recorded with the intention that you will hear it the evening of Sunday, December 13, 2020, which is the night of the Geminids Meteor Shower. I'll be making references to this particular day in time, and this particular meteor shower. However, if you happen to be joining us from another place, or another time, and you're interested in hearing a little bit about... the end of the world, the patterns that define us through time, what the future hold, maybe... stick around. Because we're happy to have you go on this journey us.

I'm going to start tonight off with a question. And just a heads up, this is not how I usually work. I usually have my audience directly in front of me, in person, and we share and learn in a very collaborative way. However, tonight is a little different, but I don't want to give up on asking questions, because I think questions are really important ways for us to learn and connect with the world around us. And I know this question will probably strike most of us as a little heavy, especially given the year that we've had. But maybe this is a benefit to us not being in person, and having a little bit of space. Because I am not in front of you, you don't have to feel pressured to answer in any particular way, or at all, really. You can just let the question wash over you. And if you don't like it, let it go. Let it drain away. But if you are willing, and interested, and want to engage in it, I want you to consider this:

Woof, right? I bet we'd all write novels to our past selves, if we could. Silly stuff, like "stock up on toilet paper and flour." Or frustrating stuff, like "now is the time to take that trip you've always wanted to take." Or even sad stuff, like "don't keep telling yourself you'll visit your relatives next month." Lots and lots of stuff. So many lessons learned, regrets, heartbreaks, struggles. I know what I would say. If I could talk to myself one year ago from today, I would say "be prepared to let things go." But I would also say, "you are about to find yourself blessed by some pretty incredible gifts."

No matter how you think about it, this year has not been easy, by any means. So why am I even asking about this? What does this have to do with a meteor shower? Well, it turns out that between meteor showers, a feeling that the end of the world is nigh, a sense of return or repetition, this Groundhogs day that we seem to be stuck in, there's a lot of common ground.

We'll get to that, but first, I do want to set you up for success, because I'm pretty sure most of you are here mainly for a meteor shower, and I just happen a distraction until it gets dark enough. So. Before we get too deep into the end of the world, I want to talk about good meteor shower watching. Which also happens to be the very first gift of the Geminids.

So like I promised, we're gonna talk about good meteor shower watching. There are some things you can control, and there are some things you can't. The biggest thing that tends to impact meteor shower watching is the moon cycle. On a full moon, stargazing is, let's just say, not ideal. Our moon is the second brightest thing in our sky, after our sun, so when meteor showers happen on full moons, it's just not the best viewing. But new moon nights, there is no moon out and there's no natural light pollution competition, so the meteors can really shine their best. Tonight, we're pretty lucky, we have a new moon. So given the new moon, and hopefully some good weather for you, which is unfortunately another thing that you cannot control, you should have a pretty decent view of this meteor shower, right off the bat.

As far as things you can control, when it comes to optimal meteor shower viewing. Look around your surroundings for light pollution. You might be able to ask your neighbors to please turn off their blinding security lights next door--I don't know, kinda depends on your relationship with your neighbor. Do you have security lights that you can turn off? Did you leave lamps on inside that you can dim? How 'bout the flashlight that you brought out with you? Is that off? Is your phone? You can listen to this podcast without scrolling on your phone, I promise. All of these things are important for making sure that you can have a good meteor shower experience. So turn down the brightness on your phone, or your tablet, or your screen, or whatever, and put it away, and resist the impulse to check your screens.

If you need motivation, think of it this way. The human eye, in general, can take up take about half an hour to adjust to darkness, about thirty minutes. Luckily for you, this program is about half an hour, so the timer starts now. If you can keep your devices tucked away for thirty minutes, you will have a nice meteor shower.

Finally, you can control in the night sky where you look, and a lot of folks might think that that is the key to seeing the most meteors. However, I'm gonna say, "don't bother." The Geminids, like everyone meteor shower, is named after the constellation from which it appears to radiate. "Geminids" literally means "Children of Gemini," so in this case we're talking about the constellation Gemini. But all that really means is when you see meteors tonight, you could trace them back to the constellation Gemini. But by no means should you fixate only that constellation because the truth of the matter is meteors can and will appear throughout the entire sky. So gift number one of the Geminids: don't stress about the right place to see them. Wherever you are, you have front row seats. So sit back, relax, because now we're going to talk about the end of the world. Bum bum bum...

So, for thousands of years, humans have been watching meteors and meteor showers. A meteor is really just a shooting star, it's that bright flash of light streaking across the night sky. Often, they've signified the end of the world. A particularly infamous meteor shower occurred in 1833, during the Leonids, which is an annual November shower, but in this year, 1833, there was such an intensity to the shower that people who were watching thought the world was surely ending. It didn't, obviously, but it made a lasting impression on those Northern Hemisphere observers. Likewise, in native Hawaiian traditions, astronomical events could be foreboding, or they signify significant things to come. Certainly meteor showers stand out, but up until recently it was more because of the doom and gloom, a sense of anxiety and bad things to come rather than the pretty sparkly stars that we're watching tonight.

You could see a shooting star on any random night, if you happen to be looking at the right place at the right time. However during the many annual major meteor showers that pepper our skies, for one or two nights at a time you don't have to be so lucky. Depending on where you are and the darkness of your particular sky, you could see close to a hundred or more meteors fall over the course of just one hour. How do I know that? Well I looked it up on a bunch of astronomy websites. How do the astronomers know that tonight, on all nights, and reliably the same night every year, we can brave the cold to watch the Children of Gemini light up the night sky?

Picture Earth's orbit. It's an approximate circle around our sun, and this is our annual orbit. It defines a year for us, one year. Around and around and around we go on this disc, following the same path and because we do this we occupy the same space on the same day, year after year after year. Now, imagine a dust cloud smack dab in the middle of that path, just somewhere in our orbit. It's not an enormous dust cloud, nor is it catastrophic, but it does take us a few days to move through it. So as our earth moves through this particular dust cloud, which we encounter in the same place, every year, some of that dust and debris enters out atmosphere. These particles heat up as they careen towards earth; eventually friction ignites a trail of air behind the particle and this is what causes that brilliant streak of light we call meteors, which quickly disintegrate back into the darkness of the sky.

Another way to think about is like on a long highway road trip. So most of the drive is clear, but for five minutes you drive a big cloud of bugs. So the meteors we see during a meteor shower are like the gnats, hitting the windshield... which is not entirely appetizing, but there you have it. Now whenever you see a meteor, you can think of a smushed bug, on your car... great.

Take heart in the fact that unlike the bugs on our windshield, there's almost never anything left of a meteor once it makes its dramatic appearance. Now might be a good time for a little bit of space vocabulary--a meteor is just the thing that we see lighting up the night sky, that shooting star. A meteorite is something that survives the atmosphere, and makes it all the way down to our surface. So folks might think that during meteor showers, there's a higher incidence of meteorite. Right? That kinda makes sense, because that's when more things are falling through our atmosphere, so wouldn't we find more things on our surface. However, there's no correlation between the two. Just because we have a meteor shower, doesn't mean you are going to get hit in the head by a space rock.

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