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Feel free to e-mail me at the e-mail address on my contact page.

i'm not a very good astrophotographer, but i'm pretty sure you can open the shutter with a cable for a long timed exposure… so what if it has "trails"… you might catch a meteor!

be sure to share if you do catch one, ok? if nothing else, click on my name and send it to me!

fingers crossed for you…

well, you may have missed the premier, but you can still catch the late show!

my very best advice is this… check an hourly weather forecast for 3:30-4:00 a.m. wednesday, august 13. if it is going to be clear at that hour and you can possibly observe then? THAT is the best time.

the more the moon waxes, the more even just a little moisture in the air will scatter the light and the harder it will be to see fainter meteors, while it will be "down" before then, you really need to wait as long as possible for the last vestiges of light to disappear. i know that will only give you about 90 minutes or so to observe before dawn starts robbing the sky from the other side – but the chances are getting slimmer by the day!

best of luck to you, dear…

by 5:00 i felt like some sort of weird gypsy pez dispenser with my celestial shawl tied around my head and blanket around my legs, sitting my rocker with my tin cup of coffee. (i thought about going out and laying in the grass for a full, open sky – but i kept having these visions of the uncomfortably large garden snake that lives in my well-groomed tomato plants joining the german shepherds and me in the blanket pile. (and yes, i know they do not come out at night – but my mind does not accept that fact when the dogs choose to lay on the deck.)

during peak activity time we were having a very solid 30 per hour here and there were probably more that i didn't observe. during the dark hours was a sweet 6 LM and one of the high points of the whole evening was simply watching the milky way curl around as the earth turned… winding its way through cassiopeia, perseus and ending in the coma of the pleiades. most meteors were short-arc – around 10 degrees of train, pale blue and around mag 1. a few had long trains, very pale and fast, 50-60 degrees and mag. 4… a few sweet earth-grazers that were so bright i would guess around -3 and, like ruth ann described, you felt like should make noise. (i believe they do… it sounds a whole lot like… "Woooooo HOOOOOoooooo!!" )

now, i'm off to check out the ionospheric data just out of curiousity. i was going to track it periodically last night – but chose to observe instead. i believe it has a replay feature, so maybe there's some data.

i hope everyone had an equally wonderful evening!

for those of you who happen to catch this? join in! download google earth ionosphere and do this scientifically. start with baseline sample screen shots that show what the ionosphere in western north america looks like during a random test sample. then try during the peak of the perseids to see if it registers. we know for a fact the meteor activity causes ionosphere disturbances and it would be absolutely grand to get some hard science on this.

do it!!

i've been at it all weekend. sporadic rains here in ohio has meant a very high dewpoint – but happily some very nice openings to view the perseids through.

early morning activity for the 11th was very, very nice. but again, a strong, heavy dewpoint makes for some very damp observing. some of ian's mulled wine would have been very nice to have chased off those early morning chills! but… i guess i just settled for coffee and a blanket to keep the arthritis quiet.

maybe it's age… or having having a couple of dogs curled up with you in the wee hours before dawn, but whatever it is, being out at that hour is very solemn and somehow poetic. each time the clouds would start to form, all i could think was that it was like:

"the earth's warm breath fogging the cold mirror of the sky reflecting the distant stars."

i'm getting weird in my old age.

A week ago, the Rochester Astronomy Club had a Star BQ at my favorite observing spot on the MN/IA border and both Friday and Sat. nights we saw literally dozens. I think that weekend we were seeing the Delta Aquarids and Capricornids, but late on Sat nite/Sun. morning the radiant switched to a Perseid direction.

Last nite at Eagle Bluff, the Perseids put on a show! Once again, we saw at least two dozen meteors even while we spent most of the night hunting for Herschel 400 objects.

Astronomy rocks!

http://www.tiphub.com/48_Top_tips_for_viewing_meteor_showers.html

Great article, really gets me enthused to be more of an astronomer

See you soon!

Cheers, Ian