Geminids from Essex

[NGC 1502]

 

Hello everyone. Last night was Castle Point Astronomy Club’s social evening, and a possible visit to our dark site had been mentioned. As we  munched our mince pies, bread & cheese etc, it was raining with 100% cloud cover. Forecasts kept changing, we waivered between going or not going. Eventually four of us took the decision to go, perhaps a bit unwise given the rain and iffy forecast.

We arrived at the electronic  security gate to our dark site at 23.00. The the weather was snag number one, but at this point we met the second snag. Using our electronic key, the gate refused to open, multiple tries followed but no go. Suspecting the key’s battery, we opened it up to find it contained  a CR 2032. I keep spares in my eyepiece box because that battery fits my finders, but the box was an hour’s drive back home because I’d just brought my sun lounger & loads of warm clothing. However, I recalled that my car’s remote has a similar battery, so we dismantled both keys, swapped batteries, the gate opened (hooray) and we got to our observing spot about 3 miles onto private land.

The cloud was 100%, it was blowing a gale, the rain horizontal.........trawling the ‘net, the updated forecast showed a clear slot from 01.00 to 02.00, so we chatted, drank coffee, and kept peering towards the western horizon for any incoming cloud breaks. By about 01.00 the clouds thinned, the rain stopped, the wind dropped from a gale to a strong breeze, so we set up our sun loungers and donned extra layers.

To cut the storey short, between 01.15 and 02.15, under a nice mag 5.5 sky we saw around  130 Geminids plus sporadics. Some were faint, some bright, but it was a great display, and we were dead chuffed that we took the chance and were rewarded with success.

Cheers from Essex ?

[knobby]

I did warn you about the key fob 

Glad you had a good night (and got back out again )

[Pete Presland]

Well worth the effort for a good quantity of meteors! A similar experience as myself, but it cleared earlier here and no key fob issues, which sounded like a nightmare at that time of the night.