Shooting stars

[pajr777]

I hadn't planned to go out tonight as the forecast was not great, but I stuck my head out at 2300hrs to a lovely dark sky with a few isolated clouds, but importantly none of the thin high cloud that lights the sky up that I've been seeing lately.

So a quick scout about with the binocs was in order. Pleiades beautiful as always, then just panning about pretty much at random, taking in the majesty of it all, I settled on the Coathanger asterism, which I recognised from the spring Moore marathon. After a few moments a bright white streak bisected my view - probably a tail end Draconid as it cut down from the 1 o'clock position exiting at the 7 o'clock position.

I love seeing meteors, and to see one magnified made me smile

Should I consider myself lucky, or will this seem like a pretty common event when I've got a few years of observing under my belt?

[jonathan]

I saw a very slow moving object, roughly South to North but low near the horizon, I managed to see it in my 25mm eyepiece and it was a fairly large looking object, still just a white blob but fun to try to track anyway. Most of the little white dots I see are just little white dots, they move too fast to track in the telescope, but they are satellites not meteors.

I have seen a couple of meteors streak through my eyepiece, but that's all I'll ever expect to see of them as by the time I look up it's gone.

[rowan46]

I have been observing a couple of years now and am not jaded by anything yet. As for meteors They always have a big wow factor for me after all, each meteor is unique you never see the same one twice.

[jbdtaylor]

Meteors still amaze me and I've been watching them for a couple of years now. Considering what it is, how small it is, and how fast it's going is astonishing!

Jonathan - it looks like what you saw was a man-mad e satellite.

And yesterday I was very, very lucky when observing Jupiter at 130x magnification to see a meteor pass straight over it in my line of sight. That definitely topped the experience for me, probably will never see that again!

[cyborg421]

I find all parts of the sky interesting, Messiers, constellations, double stars, satellites, meteors, comets......

i was fortunate to see the fireball earlier in the year and it's not something I'll forget in a hurry.

The nice thing about meteors is you never know when you are going to see one.

Simon

[brantuk]

Watching meteorites is fun but when you see one shoot across the eyepiece it's allways a surprise and a nice little wow moment. But they can also be a pain if you're in the middle of a 5min exposure on some object you're trying to image. All part of the fun of stargazing lol

[LukeSkywatcher]

Whenever i see a meteor be it one from a known shower or just a sporadic, it still makes me draw a breath and i think "WOW".

[Pete Presland]

i was out very early saturday morning and i saw a few just above orion, including a spectacular one that left a smoke trail behind it for a few seconds.like you say never fails to make me smile and go "WOW"