The Perseids are Coming!

[The Lone Ranger]

The Perseid Meteor Shower is starting up. It should peak Sunday/Monday night. It's expected to be a good show this year, with an average of one meteor per minute visible.

I hope the skies are clear tomorrow night!

Cheers,

Michael

[fragment]

Damn! Looks like we don't get to see them down our way. Everyone else, enjoy!

[viscousmemories]

Where should I be looking?

[The Lone Ranger]

The northern portion of the sky, near the constellation of Perseus, if you're familiar with it.

Peak viewing time is between midnight and about 4:00 a.m., when the Earth is turned so that it's facing into the oncoming meteors.

Cheers,

Michael

[Leesifer]

I'm looking forward to Sunday night for this.

:crossed: for a clear night!

[Petra]

Where should I be looking?

Up, silly.


Wish we got 'em. Though the weather here is going to be atrocious, so we wouldn't see them anyway this year.

:wish:

[Chris Porter]

Where should I be looking?

The northeast portion of the sky, the paths of the meteors will appear to radiate some distance from the right of Polaris. You should be able to spot several in just 15 minutes, I've done this several times, it's well worth staying up or getting up to check it out. Some can even leave long, glittering paths across the sky. So you don't actually have to look for Perseus, but it will help because of the variety of meteors, some are short and faint, others long and glittery. You'd catch more of the short ones looking in the right direction.

[ceptimus]

Don't bother with binoculars or a telescope. Meteors are best seen with the naked eye.

If you have a good dark location you can get some good photos - you need a tripod or something steady to stand the camera on, and then use as long an exposure time as possible and hope that one or more meteors streak past during the time the shutter is open. Don't point the camera directly at the radiant (the place in the sky that all the meteors seem to be coming from) - you get better results by pointing it off to one side. If you live in or near a large town or city, long exposure photography isn't really feasible, due to light pollution. :(

There is a new (almost invisible) moon now, so we should have good dark skies to observe the meteor shower. Mars will be visible as a red dot near the constellation of Taurus in the north eastern sky.

* ceptimus is hoping for not too much cloud on Sunday night.

[Petra]

Oh, please take photos if you can! :please:

[Crumb]

I have been looking forward to this for the past few days. Thanks for the details TLR and Chris. I will be trying to view through some light pollution.

[curses]

This is one reason why I look forward to my birthday every year! The Perseids are the best meteor shower in town for viewing in a large city.

[Dingfod]

It should be great viewing here for a change, the heat had driven the humidity down enough to make the night sky more clear.

[curses]

Well, we sat outside for 45 minutes, and saw a total of one. The wal mart up the street is casting too much light.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Courtesy of Astronomy.com :yup:

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/objects/images/perseids-2007-map.jpg

[Kyuss Apollo]

Well, we sat outside for 45 minutes, and saw a total of one. The wal mart up the street is casting too much light.

We have a lot of light pollution here too. It's times like this that I really miss living out in the middle of nowhere on the ol' sheep farm.

Well, actually I miss living there a lot more than just during the off meteor shower, but that was a great place to watch the sky from...

edit: I saw 2 and my wife saw 3 in about 30 minutes. We are going to go back out a bit later when its supposedly more active

[wildernesse]

We went over to the lake where the paper said would be a good place to see--it was pretty dark for being so close to Raleigh. We were there almost two hours, and saw about three spectacular ones and a few more dusty little ones. If it had been darker, we might have seen even more light ones--but we would have had to drive much farther out.

Next year, I think we'll go camping.

[Chris Porter]

I just got back from my watching, saw a couple long ones, several short ones, and one fat, short, sizzly one. I parked on the side of a rural road not far from me, one that didn't have houses nearby. I took my laptop, loaded and running Stellarium, with me (so I wouldn't have to start up and ruin my night eyes). It's getting foggy, and all of the horizon was shrouded, but with the help of this planetarium program, was able to find all sorts of constellations with it, though the big dipper was occluded, was able to make out many constellations once I got my bearings using Mars and the cloudy smudge (Pleiades) just above it.

[Shake]

Courtesy of Astronomy.com :yup:

<image>

Courtesy of APOD :yup:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0708/perseids_bruenjes.jpg

[Uthgar the Brazen]

*grabs his cat and dives under the bed*

Tell me when it's over! :sweaty: