Perseid Meteor Shower

Tonight the sky was surprisingly clear. I say surprisingly because we are looking at Bonnie and Charlie in the neighborhood. But there is a patch of clear sky between them. The summer Milky Way was easy, almost bright! I used my binocular platform to observe for a few minutes before I started my counting. Numerous nebulas and clusters were easy to see. Remind me to show you the platform I made for my binoculars. They really help make using them a pleasure.

Anyway, I went out Clark Road a few miles east of I-75 to a church parking lot and set up. There were a few street-type lights and I parked my van in such a way that I could set up behind it, shielded from most of the lights.

I started looking and counting at midnight and lasted for about 40 minutes before the mosquitos grew too fierce. I saw 9 meteors in that 40 minutes: a couple very faint and 4 that were very bright, brighter than zero magnitude. The first was at 12:04 and its path was about 45-50 degrees long. The next was at 12:08 and was the brightest of the session and longest, spanning over 90 degrees. The last one was at 12:38 and was nearly as bright and long. A good show indeed. The number was a little less than I would have liked but catching a good meteor is always worth the time.

Getting started

I spent the first week of June 2004 in Costa Rica. Among other things I was excited by the prospect of seeing the sky from 10 degrees north latitude. Alas, it was the first part of their rainy season so we had clouds most of the time. I did have one clear night and got to see the Southern Cross and alpha Centuri, both firsts for me. Something else new was that the Sun crossed the meridian NORTH of the zenith. First time for that also. In fact, the sun never touched the southern half of the sky while we were there.

One last note about the sky there was the length of the day (daylight hours). It was about 1.5 hours shorter than in Sarasota, which in turn is about 1.5 hours shorter than, say, in New York State (again in June.) And since it is only a couple degrees further west longitude than Sarasota and in the Central Time Zone with no daylight savings in effect, the sun set at about 6:10 PM! On the longest day of the year!

Now if you didn't follow all that, that's OK. I'll explain it more in class.