Monday, August 13, 2007

Dont miss the Perseid Meteor Shower...which was last night!

Aw, crap. I missed it. And I never even got around to telling anyone else to keep an eye out for the Perseid Meteor Shower.

A friend IMed me that he saw a few when he was getting out of his car last night, and stayed up to watch the show - which included one that left a trail from horizon to horizon. Pretty.

Well, there's still hope: even though the peak was last night, there may still be a few stragglers tonight. I plan on setting myself up in a comfy Adirondack chair, leaning back, and waiting.

Let me make it up to you: in the pre-dawn hours on the morning of Tuesday, August 28, look to the West to see the Moon in eclipse! (This may come as a bit of a shock to people who are still up after expecting to see two Moons on August 27!)

UPDATE, 9:30 AM 8/14/07: Wow. Even though I missed the main party, there were still plenty of meteors to be seen in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. I even saw what I'm thinking was a meteor that had split apart some time before it became visible, so I saw two simultaneous meteors separated by several degrees in the sky that started at the same time, stopped at the same time, and could be traced back to a common point.

Oh, bonus: The sky was absolutely clear and dark, with the Milky Way running overhead from Northeast to Southwest, and the kite shape of Scutum Sobieskii (named in honor of a distant relative) Delphinus the Dolphin directly above. Well worth spending the night under the stars in any case!
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5 comments:

  1. tiffany8/14/2007 3:06 AM

    as afte would have it, i ended up at my friend's house (on a lake, in the middle of nowhere) for dinner last night. of course i decided to spend the night, once we figured out what was in store! we took the boat out at about 1am, dropped anchor, and laid back to watch the show.

    it was completely amazing.

    i promise, i enjoyed it enough for the both of us.

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  2. tiffany8/14/2007 3:07 AM

    fate, that is.
    there's something about your blog that renders me incapable of typing.

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  3. D.B. Echo8/14/2007 9:32 AM

    On the water is absolutely the best place to view meteors! I'm glad you got to see it1

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  4. whimsical brainpan8/14/2007 4:25 PM

    I always mean to watch the shower each year and miss it.

    Did you take any pics?

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  5. D.B. Echo8/14/2007 8:24 PM

    I tried to take some photos of the Milky Way, but I'm never sure if what I'm seeing are stars or random pixels in a black image. But as far as photos of meteors - oh, no, for something like that I rely on Astronomy and Sky & Telescope.

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