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Perseids Anyone?

Dave In Vermont

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SnakeyJ

SnakeyJ

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Quite clear of cloud, but hazy here tonight with lightning flashes in the distant south - managed to catch 29 in an hour and a half - though a couple moving in unexpected directions.     Will probably go berserk now I'm turning in, but bed becons ;)

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cotterless45

cotterless45

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Kicked off about 10.15, then about 25 followed until 1 with sleep arriving. Four were really dramatic with long bright streaks and after burn trails. Useful exercise , just laying back and observing that area of the sky.

One was a straggler and headed horizontally the wrong way !

Nick.

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Moonshane

Moonshane

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Kicked off about 10.15, then about 25 followed until 1 with sleep arriving. Four were really dramatic with long bright streaks and after burn trails. Useful exercise , just laying back and observing that area of the sky.

One was a straggler and headed horizontally the wrong way !

Nick.

Pretty much identical to my experiences Nick. Nice to see a few for a change!
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skybadger

skybadger

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I spent from 10:15 to 01:45 out with the kids before it finally clouded over. Had two cameras running  - the video all sky and DSLR wit fisheye on longer exposures.

Probably saw up to 60 all told with some long lulls in between. The sky was mag 3.5 with some pollution diminishing as the night wore on and thin haze evaporating slowly so the Milky Way was not terribly distinct until finally the rain clouds came across. There seemed to be a lot of horizon lightning flickers early on.

Mixed feelings about how many we saw - its a lot but could easily have been more with darker skies .

Out fo several hundred DSLR images I have clocked 2 large meteors. May be mor ein there but it will take a dark room not a train to find them.

Mike

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kerrylewis

kerrylewis

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Got up at 12.45 to partially cloudy skies. Counted 13 in 45 mins which is about twice the number seen on Monday night in the same period - so that makes sense. Luckily there was a hole in the cloud around the radiant but that meant that most that I saw were short and quick. One or two with more persistent trains. I was enjoying myself but then the partially cloudy turned to fully cloudy so retreated to bed. 

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Stub Mandrel

Stub Mandrel

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Wow!

I went out to a reasonably dark sky site at 10 planning to return at 12 when the cloud was forecast to be total.

I eventually came back at about 1:30 because I had run both my camera batteries flat and I was shattered. Discovered the front door had been latched (not everyone knew I was heading out...) and rather than wake everyone I spent five hours in the car!

On the plus side, a fantastic night of visual observing, not just the meteors - I counted 43, including three seen through the car window trying to get to sleep... Some of them were huge, many had trails and, one which went through Ursa Minor left a trail that glowed for about ten seconds - long enough for me to wait for the exposure I was on to end, move the camera and take another shot - although I only got two out of thirty seconds so I doubt it came out.  It crossed thin cloud, and I wondered if it had actually hit the cloud as the glow was brightest there. I have never seen a trail you could look away from and look back at again before.

The cloud was patchy so I was continually pointing the camera at different bits of sky, I'm sure most pictures have wisps of cloud on them so they may be 'artistic' rather than good widefield shots, but I have got most of the constellations that were up. Perseus, pegasuis and Andromeda seen properly for the first time this year - usually lost in LP, although I had to wait until the north east sky was completely cloud free. Milky way gradually got better and better until eventually I could see the arc of it from Aquila to Cassieopia. I think I may have just glimpsed Andromeda galaxy - I know I have a tiny fuzzball on some photos (28mm lens means it can only be small). Must have taken 2-300 shots with a wide adaptor on, I'm sure I have some meteors caught, although all the 'best ones' seemed to fly by out of shot. Preview on the D10 is very slow and clumsy so I put my time into taking pictures, not looking at them.

The meteors were all over the sky, I must have missed as many as I saw because of camera fiddling etc. and then triple that for not being able to look all round (despite some time lying on the bumpy ground). One big meteor went straight down in the west, at 90-degrees to all the rest, so it must have been from another source. I saw one 'double meteor' two short streaks one starting as the other faded and behind the other but parallel.

Lots of satellites, I saw one flare - it faded gradually then a bright-star level flash, then it got brighter with a really bright flash, then faded and gradually dipped down.

I saw eight bright flashes, the first four were in two pairs - one in Ursa Major the other in in Cassiopeia, the others were all single flashes. I don't know if these were time meteors 'exploding' or satellite flares, but I couldn't see any associated satellites.

Lots of wildlife sounds too - including something that flies and sounds like someone being stabbed! I don't think it was a barn owl, it didn't sound right, and I'm sure I would have been able to see it. Didn't half wake me up the first time I heard it!

So, stiff as a board and very tired - pass the ibuprofen....

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laudropb

laudropb

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Nice clear sky here last night for a change. Meteor watched from 10 pm until 3 :30 am in 6 half our sessions. Activity built up throughout the sessions. Final count was 72 Perseids, 5 other meteors, I flare and 3 satellites. Some of the Perseids were very bright and left lovely trails. In between meteor watching I had a few sessions on the Dob looking at the usual suspects, M31, M33, M 94, the double cluster etc. tried out a new OIII filter on the ring nebula and got my best ever back garden views of this lovely object.

So all I all a very productive evening and very enjoyable, if tiring.

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paulastro

paulastro

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Out from 11.50pm until 02.10am.  Quite hazy for most of the time and view a little restricted as I was observing from inside my runoff roof observatory to shield me from local lights.  Still saw 28 Perseids, many of which had persistent trains. The best (E of Cygnus) was seen at 00.22am, mag -5 and it had a persistent train for 11 seconds.  If I had better conditions the count would have been many more as I was missing the fainter ones - hence me seeing mostly bright ones with a higher praportion of persistant trains.  A really nice session.

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J_N_Y

J_N_Y

Posted
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Out from about 10:30 until 2am. About midnight my better half (who had been dozing in the car) asked whether it was time to get going home, it was a school night after all!

Anyways, I asked if she wanted to get out and just look for 5 minutes which she did. As luck would have it, she lay down on the sea wall (we were at the local coast) and within 2 minutes we saw a huge one. Nevertheless, she was hooked by then.

she has never really seen my interest in astronomy until last night. We were somewhere with much darker skies than home and she couldn't believe the amount of stars visible. After a while, when her eyes adjusted she was amazed that you could see a feint idea of the milky way, showed her andromeda through the bino's, that amazed her. Looked at some 'dark' patches in the sky to show how they're actually not dark at all, and then ran through some of the constellations. She was amazed that mizar was a double star as well. Is was fantastic to "see her eyes open" to the wonders above. She loved it, and went from asking to go home, to keeping me out until 2!

Needless to say this morning, she has asked can we find somewhere darker and go stargazing over the weekend.

Lost count of the amount of perseids we say due to checking out lots of others, but we saw a fair few.

Thank you perseids!!

Sent from my D6603 using Tapatalk

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Macavity

Macavity

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I was averaging about twenty (video) meteors / hour above naked eye limit?

At between three and four a.m. <gasp> Then the mists started to roll in...

Maybe a spurious observation, but I noted a couple of "paired" events?

Two tracks quickly following each other along the same-ish trajectory.

Maybe the original body fragmented? Or merely my perception! :p

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dwarfnebula

dwarfnebula

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Stepped out for about 30 minutes at 12:30AM EDT .    Sky was clear but the transparency was not the best  not to mention the level of LP.   I was still able to observe 4 or 5 Perseids .   Weather forecast is not to promising for the next few days so I made sure I took advantage this morning for viewing. 

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bartyboy73

bartyboy73

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Staying in deepest darkest Tuscany this year for the Perseids! After a few evening of cloud and thunderstorms the main event was clear! We laid out on loungers by the pool and had a great show. We averaged about 15-20 per hour between 22.00hrs and 00.30. We saw a great ISS pass and several flares. One Perseid seemed to explode!! Some were really very bright I would guess about -4 or -5.

All in all having watched the Perseids forany years this was the best year and by far the most agreeable conditions!!

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