In the months leading up to the new millennium, people can expect some eye-catching meteor showers in the night sky but nothing on the cataclysmic, world-threatening scale of the movie "Deep Impact."
That聮s the prediction from Katy Garmany, professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and director of the university聮s Fiske Planetarium.
Garmany says star-watchers who can escape the glare of city lights and find a nice dark place in the mountains or grasslands of Colorado could be rewarded with a couple of spectacular shows.
The first is due Aug.11 and Aug. 12 as the earth moves through a cloud of debris from the remnant of a comet; then something very similar is due three months later, with peak viewing expected on the nights of Nov. 17 and Nov. 18.
"It聮s very unlikely any of the meteor fragments will fall to earth," Garmany says. "There will only be small pieces, which will burn up before they reach the ground."
However, she says the meteor displays, like showers of shooting stars, will last most of the night and can be clearly seen by the naked eye from good, dark sites such as in the mountains or the grasslands east of Fort Collins.
Also on Aug. 11 there will be a total solar eclipse, though astronomers in Boulder -- or anywhere in the United States for that matter -- will have to travel to see this rare phenomenon.
The eclipse, resulting from the particular alignment of the earth, moon and sun, and caused by the moon聮s shadow moving across the earth, will start in the North Atlantic and swing across the planet in a band approximately 65 miles wide.
The total eclipse will touch the tip of southern England, then travel across parts of France, Hungary, the Black Sea, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India before finishing in the Indian Ocean.
Garmany says the eclipse moves quickly and will be total only a few minutes in each place. If the weather is clear the effect will be like twilight, she says, enough to fool twittering birds into thinking it聮s time to roost and cows to head home for milking.
Such an event happens less than once a year and occurs in any one place on the planet, on average only about once every 400 years.
While meteors and an eclipse are due in the next few months, nothing much will be happening in the skies close to the new millennium, according to Garmany, who says the date has little astronomical significance and derives solely from the calendar created by man.
Nearer to home, however, there are plenty of events lined up on Friday nights over the summer at CU's Fiske Planetarium on Regent Drive.
Topics covered during the coming weeks include cosmic collisions, constellations and calendars, which looks at the sky now and at various times in history, searching for distant worlds and a detailed look at the planet Mars.
All these star shows begin at 8 p.m. and four of them will be followed at 10 p.m. by laser shows in the 210-seat planetarium featuring lights and music from such artists as Bob Marley, Pink Floyd and The Grateful Dead.
Call 303-492-5002 for schedule information or see the Web page at .