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Perseid Meteor Showers This Week, Aug 11


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I actually saw my first ever Perseid meteor last night on the way home from work at 12: 30 am. For 14 years, it has always been too cloudy to see anything.

I only saw one, but it was a fireball. Caught a glimpse of a bright object at the top edge of my windshield, looked closer and saw a bright white ball of fire with a white tail

arc over my car. I had the car window down this time, but heard no sonic booms.....5th one I have seen in last 5 years now..Wonder if a dashboard camera would catch these events?

The first one I ever saw was on the Interstate coming home from an Indiana Gold prospecting trip. I thought it was a low flying airplane until I looked closer, again at the top edge of my windshield,

and saw it was a Green ball of light with a short green tail, like the size of the sun. It freaked me out so bad I had to sit in a gas station for 1/2 hour to calm down.

Dunno why the first fireball was green in color and the other 4 were  white ?

 

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Cool Tvan! Thanks Jim!

Fortunately? My old man is an astronomy nerd :)! We have gotten up many a time at 2:30am to see meteor showers. This year's Perseid is supposed to be a "outburst" shower, so like up to 150-200/hour vs the 80/hour normally. To see anywhere close to that many per/hour, it needs to be DARK, and clear of clouds/smoke etc. I was out smoking last night, sitting near my bright porch light, so I could only see the brightest meteors. I only saw 5 in 2 hours, but they were blazin', long and bright! Also I was out there 10:30pm-12:30am, so the moon was still out, and the Perseid constellation (the general direction from which they enter our atmosphere) was still low on the NE horizon. 2:30-4:30am the moon will be down, and the "origin" of the meteors higher to the NNE. I've seen hundreds of meteors in my years, all 5 last night were pretty decent! So last night was the "peak", but they'll continue for a couple more days. Problem is the waxing moon is getting brighter and staying up later. Get out there tomorrow morning to watch earth's force field protect us from speeding space rocks! Of course, it's cool when a few get through on occasion, they make trippy collectibles for earthlings ??!

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Paulito,

The atmospheric conditions you described are exactly why The UCLA atmospheric research facility I worked at in Alaska was located where it was. Alaska has extremely clear conditions and intense darkness in winter with no city light sources.

I was an atmospheric research technician, running experiments there for many years. I forget what year it was that we had an intense Leonids meteor shower. But in that year we tracked hundreds of Leonids per hour. Of course our experiments did not depend on visual sightings, although we did have some of those.

With this equipment we see every meteor that enters the atmosphere. Each one is recorded digitally.

Our experimental equipment included a liquid Mercury telescope, laser excitation, photometers and computer diagnostics.

This is one of the lasers inside of the building. Look closely for the yellow laser line. It comes out of the laser horizontally on the left, then hits a turning mirror and shoots straight up.

nalaser.jpg

 This is the laser exiting the building. It excites the Sodium layer at 90 Km in altitude.

lidar1.jpg

 This is the liquid Mercury parabolic dish telescope. It holds 450 lbs. of Mercury.

mirror.jpg

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Wow, That's an amazing setup with the liquid Mercury Mirror. Who dreams up these things?  That seems like real world Star Trek stuff. 

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I went out in southern California and was not rewarded with many meteors.  We were out in the 1-3AM time after the moon was down.  I've seen much better.

We'll try to see a few stragglers tonight.

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