Catch a Falling Star Tonight (Well, Not Literally)
If you head out of your house tonight and look up toward the constellation Perseus, you should get one heck of a show thanks to the Perseid meteor shower. Experts are predicting you could see upwards of 80 meteors an hour when the storm hits its peak on Wednesday morning between midnight and 5 AM, but there should be plenty to see tonight and tomorrow night.
The only difficulty will be the full moon that will also be up during peak viewing hours, which will obscure some of the fainter meteors. However, if you don’t look directly at the moon (thus ruining your night vision), you should still see quite a lot.
The Perseids are usually one of the two most visible showers during the year but, since the other one happens in December and people much prefer sitting outside on a warm summer’s evening rather than freezing their cabooses off, this is the most popular.
If you’ve never watched a meteor shower before, I have a couple or three tips you might find helpful.
1) Grab a comfy chair or blanket and relax – If you’re going to be out for more than just a few minutes, you really do want to be comfortable. Getting a crick in your neck because you’ve been standing for half and hour looking up at the sky isn’t my idea of fun. So find a chair that’ll let you recline just a little or, better yet, throw something down on the ground and lie back.
2) Leave the big flashlight inside – Even a little light can mess up your night vision and once it’s gone, only a few minutes of darkness can bring it back. If you need light while you’re outside, use your small flashlight. One of those keychain lights would work just fine, especially if the light from it is green or blue-green. Red used to be the color of choice for stargazing, but green lets you see more detail with less intense light. And intensity is what really matters here. Use only as much light as you absolutely must, no matter what color you choose.
3) Don’t stare – Your eyes are built to catch all sorts of motion at the edges but if you fixate on a single point, you can get a case of “tunnel vision” and you’ll miss a lot. Don’t worry about focusing on anything in particular and don’t move your eyes too quickly when you do spot a falling star. This is a meteor storm, so if you dont’ see one clearly, you’ll only have a minute (or less) before the next one shows up. It’s almost guaranteed that you get to see a few very clearly.
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Category: Hey, Mr. Science Guy!, Out in the Black
Oh cool. Now if I can just figure out which direction I should be looking?? I have no idea where the constellation Perseus is.
The best meteors are the ones you don't expect. But meteors happen a lot. Eclipses are better. With a lunar eclipse, you can stand on top of a mountain and watch the moon set and the sun rise at the exact same time. And they are exactly apart from each other. The sky is flaming orange and red on one side, and indigo and purple on the other. If you ever watch that from the Continental Divide, you'll know what beauty is. But that's a rare event, so just see the Divide. And see the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. I've already seen much more than most people will ever see. And sunrise at the Grand Canyon is the best. Well, except for sitting on top of a mountain and watching the sun rise over Denver and the moon set over the Rocky Mountains at the same time. And feeling like you're on the top of the world and you're only at 14,000 feet. Want to really see the top of the world? Go to China/Tibet. I've only seen the third tallest mountain (Kangchenjunga), but it's really big. It makes the mountains around me look like tiny bumps in the ground. The Rockies are a beautiful mountain chain, but they are nothing like the Himalayas. Those mountains are downright scary. They're fifty miles away and look like they are right in front of you and about to fall down and crush you. The size cannot be explained with either words or pictures. You just have to see the Himalayas to ever know. See the Grand Canyon first to get a sense of incomprehensible scale. That's just a warm-up for the Himalayas. Incomprehensibly huge is what those mountains are. Yaks don't even climb them. Humans climb them, but they need to carry oxygen to do it. I admire those that can do the climb, but if you're going where yaks won't go, maybe you're off your range. But if you do go there, man the stars are so bright. But for safety, just stick to the Nevada desert to see the stars. Jokers don't do well in the Himalayas. But at least the vulture won't even fly that high. You corpse will be preserved forever in that ice. Unless the Tibetans take your body down the mountain to be consumed.
[...] again, I went to bed insanely early (for me). The Sundries Shack reminds us that there’s also viewing opportunities tonight, moonlight and weather permitting. [...]