Mars Hill Quick Report: June 27-July 3
Welcome back to the Mars Hill Quick Report, a bite-sized weekly news update from Lowell Observatory! Each week, we’ll give you the short version of upcoming events at Lowell and beyond, plus a little dash of history.
News
☆ Monday, June 27
Lowell Observatory hosting Star Party at Flagstaff Public Library
Experience the night skies like you’ve never seen them before on Monday, June 27 from 8:00 to 9:30PM at Wheeler Park.
Join the Flagstaff Public Library and Lowell Observatory for a starry night filled with art, science, and activities for all ages!
- Use telescopes from Lowell Observatory for a guided tour of the night sky
- Log meteors and identify galaxies as a citizen scientist
- Gather for a kids’ starry storytime
- Paint the sky on the library’s star mural
Free parking is available in the lot across from City Hall. Bring comfortable shoes, a light coat, a lawn chair or blanket, and your smart phone (if you have one/if desired).
☆ Thursday, June 30
Asteroid Day Big Impact Event, hosted by Lowell Observatory and Meteor Crater
Meteor Crater and Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, set the stage for a fantastic Asteroid Day celebration. Flagstaff’s “Big Impact Event” will highlight the Meteor Crater, formed 50,000 years ago, representing the best preserved meteor impact site in the world.
Meteor Crater is 700 feet deep, more than an astronomical 4,000 feet across, and 2.4 miles in circumference.
Lowell Observatory, a 128-year-old astronomical observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, studies near-earth asteroids and has discovered roughly 30,000 asteroids and about 40 comets in our solar system.
The two organizations together will plan a one-day event complete with panels, speakers, food trucks, local beer, tours of both facilities, poi performances, and night-sky viewing.
This Week in History
☆ June 30, 1908
Tunguska Impact occurs in Siberia
The Tunguska Impact (also referred to as the Tunguska Event or the Tunguska Incident) was a catastrophic explosion resulting from a meteor air burst on June 30, 1908. The explosion occurred over a sparsely populated area of Eastern Siberia, and flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 830 square miles of forest. Eyewitness reports suggest that at least three people may have lost their lives in the explosion. Though the incident is classified as an impact event, the meteor itself is thought to have disintegrated about 3-6 miles above the Earth’s surface, leaving no discernable crater behind.
The Tunguska Impact served as a grave example of the dangers that errant meteors could pose to the Earth, inspiring the creation of Asteroid Day. This UN-sanctioned, international event was created to raise public awareness about the dangers that large space objects pose to Earth and support research into methods of planetary defense, and is observed each year on the 30th of June.
Fallen trees at Tunguska, 1927. | Soviet Academy of Science/Wikimedia Commons
