Ready to Watch the Perseid Shower? Join Me for a Clear Sky Viewing!

[Dembadon]

Anyone planning on watching? There will be a new moon, and no clouds in the forecast for my area.

We'll have to drive about 20 minutes to avoid light pollution, but I'm anticipating a great evening!

 

[Drakkith]

I'm at my parents place where the sky is much, much darker than where I live. I plan to watch it!

 

[Silicon Waffle]

I'm planning to make a wish upon the fallen stars.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

It peaks this year on the night of August 12 and the morning of August 13. Good luck everyone!

 

[Drakkith]

I'm planning to make a wish upon the fallen stars.

Let's see. One wish per shooting star... times 200 per hour... square root of seven... we're going to be RICH!

 

[davenn]

LOL Drakwont see too much south of the equator, Perseus is well below the horizon

edit
doing some looking on Stellarium, Perseus just rises in the nthrn sky prior to sunrise
If I can drag myself out of bed at 3 am and get to a darker site, I may well photo some of the meteors that radiate above the horizon for me

the trick is getting out of bed when it is near 0 deg C and driving for an hour to get out of the city lights

Dave

 

[Drakkith]

the trick is getting out of bed when it is near 0 deg C and driving for an hour to get out of the city lights

Huh, it's 105 F at my parents place here in Texas. Wanna trade?

 

[davenn]

meet somewhere in the middle ~ 75F

another 2-3 months and we will be into the 38C ++ (100F ++) temps

we mite hit 40 - 45C ( ~ 105 - 110 F) maybe 8 - 10 days / summerfound a spot just to the north of Sydney, about 45 mins drive from home that is the sky is clear tomorrow morn I will get onsite around 330 - 400 am and see if I can photo any Perseids

Dave

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

On Thursday I'll be at a cabin far from most lights. Hoping for clear sky!

 

[davenn]

On Thursday I'll be at a cabin far from most lights. Hoping for clear sky!

I expect to see some photos of meteors

 

[davenn]

well the display in the southern hemisphere this morning was poor to say the least
1 Perseid meteor in an hour and I didn't see it visually ... the camera captured it
view facing NNE, 14mm wide angle, 30 sec exp, ISO 1250
no processing other than cropping and resizing to fit the forum limits

over that hour ( between 0330 and 0430 Australian EST 12 Aug 2015 ... 1730 - 1830UT 11 Aug 2015) of observing I saw 6 or 7 other sporadic
meteors of course, Murphy's Law struck and they were not in the camera field of view Dave

 

[Bystander]

wont see too much south of the equator, Perseus is well below the horizon

Huh? You won't see the center of the radiant, but you should still see the same frequency of tracks --- shouldn't you?

Just past "oh-dark-thirty" here, and all I got was two faint tracks over ten minutes --- give it another look in an hour or so.

Edit: five over twenty after the "hour or so."

 

[davenn]

Huh? You won't see the center of the radiant, but you should still see the same frequency of tracks --- shouldn't you?

Only the ones that radiate above the horizon would be seen ( of course)

That pic of one above was the only one in an hour of photos

Dave

 

[Helios]

It's the same thing every time with these meteor showers. The day before, they interview some astronomer who says; "This promises to be the light show of the century. There will be so many shooting stars that you might faint from the excitement. Get the lawn chairs, cook some popcorn, wake up the kids, and prepare to be dazzled by nature's greatest fireworks spectacle". Well, I'm done with them. I think I,ve seen one shooting star ever out of three encounters.
I wonder how this debris can just rest on Earth's orbit in the first place. Year after year it just sits there immune from gravity? I don't get it.

 

[Student100]

It's the same thing every time with these meteor showers. The day before, they interview some astronomer who says; "This promises to be the light show of the century. There will be so many shooting stars that you might faint from the excitement. Get the lawn chairs, cook some popcorn, wake up the kids, and prepare to be dazzled by nature's greatest fireworks spectacle". Well, I'm done with them. I think I,ve seen one shooting star ever out of three encounters.
I wonder how this debris can just rest on Earth's orbit in the first place. Year after year it just sits there immune from gravity? I don't get it.

It wasn't that bad in the early morning hours, I think I saw one every 30~ seconds a few hours before dawn.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I was up in northern Wisconsin this weekend and got to see several go by.

 

[phyzguy]

I laid out in the back yard for about one hour early Thursday morning and saw about 20-40 in a one hour period. Pretty good for a meteor shower, but people who were expecting much more based on the media hype were disappointed. I saw about 5-10 that were reasonably bright, and about 15-20 that were in my peripheral vision and then when I turned to look at them they were gone.

I've found that when the forecasts say 30/hour, people don't realize what that means, which is that they are two minutes apart on the average. We are so used to movies and television where things are happening every few seconds, that we forget how long 2-3 minutes where nothing is happening can be. The comments I heard from members of the general public was that they were very disappointed. I thought it was a good show.

 

[nsaspook]

A friend at work was out with the Oregon Star Party last week for the show. Will see if I can grab a few of his shots to post here.
The site from a few year ago.
http://www.oregonstarparty.org/oregonstarparty/
https://writescience.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/img_5747.jpg

 

[davenn]

I was up in northern Wisconsin this weekend and got to see several go by.

there was good aurora over the last couple of nights as well, did you see any ?
should have been easy from your location

Dave

 

[Dembadon]

Unfortunately we weren't able to make it out to see them. Had some family stuff go down.

A friend at work was out with the Oregon Star Party last week for the show. Will see if I can grab a few of his shots to post here.
The site from a few year ago.
http://www.oregonstarparty.org/oregonstarparty/
https://writescience.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/img_5747.jpg

That would be great if you could!

 

[Andy Resnick]

Anyone planning on watching? There will be a new moon, and no clouds in the forecast for my area.

We'll have to drive about 20 minutes to avoid light pollution, but I'm anticipating a great evening!

For a change, I was extremely lucky- on vacation at the beach (whole sky visibility, no light pollution) and no moon. I am currently processing the many GB of image data to see what I got... I know I captured 5 or 6. (of course, I saw many more than that by eye...)

 

[Dembadon]

For a change, I was extremely lucky- on vacation at the beach (whole sky visibility, no light pollution) and no moon. I am currently processing the many GB of image data to see what I got... I know I captured 5 or 6. (of course, I saw many more than that by eye...)

That's great news, Andy! Can't wait to see what you've got.

 

[nsaspook]

A friend at work was out with the Oregon Star Party last week for the show. Will see if I can grab a few of his shots to post here.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Here are some of the images I took of meteors- this one is from last year's Perseid:

so I thought this year would also be fairly easy. Unfortunately, this is one of the best ones, the meteor was super-bright:

You probably can't even see it- here's the image at 100%:

This image was taken with a 15/2.8, open all the way, at ISO 1600. I don't recall the settings from last year, but I'm surprised at the low contrast this year. For comparison, the Andromeda galaxy (also visible in the frame) appears brighter than the meteor:

The basic problem is that the entrance pupil is only 5 mm in diameter, smaller than your (and my) dark-adapted eye. A better lens to use for meteors would be something like a 24/1.8 or 35/1.4, since the entrance pupil is substantially larger. For me, I like the 15mm's ability to generate images like these:

 

[nsaspook]

Pictures of the friend with his ultra-light 20 inch carbon fiber over a balsa wood frame.

He's making the tracking table with some scrapped 360,000 counts per rev encoders I gave him from work.