OT: Perseids peak tonight

[Spacehead]

Just a reminder, the Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, so if it's clear where you live head outside & try to battle the full moon for a great show!

 

[CyGoR]

Shoot! I knew I forgot something..
I also heard in on the news past week that an average of 10 meteors/day ("falling stars") would be visible.. Unfortunatly the wether isn't that good anymore so I don't think I can see anything of it tonight..
Thanks for the reminder 😉

 

[aberant]

has this happened already ? i'm in the UK, the time zone thing confuses me 🙂

 

[Spacehead]

also heard in on the news past week that an average of 10 meteors/day ("falling stars") would be visible..

Usually it's way more than that, possibly up to around 50 per hour. It's hard to predict the intensity of a meteor shower before it happens.
The Perseids are one of the better ones of the year and they occur during the summer(in the Northern hemisphere), making them probably the most well known.
There are some good ones during the winter, but who wants to stand out all night in the winter? Not me, usually! But it did pay off for me 2 years ago, the Leonids of 2002 in November. That night i was seeing on average a meteor a second for more than 2 hours straight :Q That was probably the most awesome thing i have ever seen!

has this happened already ? i'm in the UK, the time zone thing confuses me

Well, the peak has passed now(Aug 12), but one nice thing about the Perseids is that you can sometimes see them several days before & after the peak, so if you have clear weather tonight or the next several days head outside & take a look. Last year i missed the peak night due to clouds, but i was still seeing 5-10 an hour the next night & around 5 an hour 3 nights after peak.

 

[Bleep]

It was a great shower this year. I have a vhf beacon that I set up during Meteor showers and use the showers for scatter transmissions and got better results this year than the last 20 some odd years that I have been doing this.

Bleep

 

[dmcowen674]

Last night was totally cloudy here, tonight there was still some clouds but enough clear sky to see most of the stars. The very high clouds were actually shielding the full Moon very well. I saw the usual few short white streaks then all of a sudden an orange flamethrower came across and was below the cloud deck! I never saw one like that before, it was so low I was expecting to hear something.

Edit: I was going to add this too and saw the News this morning that confirmed what I felt. Even though we are half a planet away when I was leaning back on the plastic Adirondack style chair looking up at the sky I felt a slight wiggle in the chair, I wondered immediately if there had just been an Earthquake. 20 miles from Greece under the sea was a 6.4 quake.
Foreigners Among Those Injured in Greek Quake

I've always wanted to set up a seismograph in the backyard, it would have recorded the event.
Earlier this year we had a 5.4 quake about a 100 miles away in Alabama and it shook our house enough to wake us up and rattle the windows. We are on a Mountain top with a lot of granite anchored well with the planet.