Astronomy

Moon phases, eclipses and meteor showers, computed for Fort Collins. All times are local.

Coming up

Meteor showers

How these are computed

Positions come from JPL ephemeris DE421 via the python package Skyfield.

Even though lunar eclipses are global events, only those visible from Fort Collins, based on the moonrise and moonset times, will be shown here. Furthermore, if the totality phase of a Total lunar eclipse occurs after the moon has set or before it has risen, it will only be listed as a "partial" or "penumbral" eclipse here, depending on how much of the eclipse is actually visible.

Each meteor shower provides the best night to view the shower, with the highest visible rate of meteors per hour for that night, based on moon interference near the shower's peak.

The letter grade on each shower compares the best hour of the best night against the best the same shower could ever be in Fort Collins (i.e. a moonless night with the meteor stream's center arriving exactly when its radiant is highest). Essentially grading "how good is this year, for this shower, from here". Some showers, such as the Southern Delta Aquariids, never reach more than a third of the way up from this latitude, so it will never be a "great" shower, but could still get an "A" as "the best chance to view this particular shower".

The constellations beside each shower are drawn from real star positions. Solar eclipses are drawn at their real magnitude, but lunar eclipses are not.