PERSEID MAXIMUM - BEST NIGHTS TONIGHT AND TOMORROW NIGHT

[paulastro]

This is true for the UK, if you live elsewhere you will need to check it out for yourself.  

Up here in Yorkshire, it looks like we have a better chance of being struck by lightning than having clear skies, but you never know.  I'll certainly be looking out for any opportunity.

Good luck wherever you are.

Edited August 11, 2020 by paulastro

[MarkAR]

Might have a chance tonight, will keep an eye out for them.

[banjaxed]

We had plenty of lightening last night and the early hours of this morning and I can’t remember a storm lasting so long, the lightening was every 2/3 seconds and the thunder was almost continuous. Not looking very promising tonight 🙁

[5haan_A]

5 hours ago, paulastro said:

This is true for the UK, if you live elsewhere you will need to check it out for yourself.  

Up here in Yorkshire, it looks like we have a better chance of being struck by lightning than having clear skies, but you never know.  I'll certainly be looking out for any opportunity.

Good luck wherever you are.

In Yorkshire too. The weather has been horrible for anything astro related recently. Fingers crossed we get a glimpse tonight.

[Tenor Viol]

Met. Off forecast is showing me a whole one hour slot from 23.00 tonight as clear... When I was much younger, I used to go on meteor watches in a group: 5 of us, 4 observers and a reccorder. We'd rotate the recorder role each hour. For Perseids it always got much better after midnight and especially towards dawn as the Earth rotates 'into' the stream.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Tenor Viol

[BRADLEY 1953]

Hi Tenor. I hope you had rather more luck than I did? I park my car in Shropshire but actually live in Worcestershire! we had thunderstorms and 32mm of rain overnight, and I saw no stars. The local weather forecast always seem more of a miss than a hit. However, on tuesday night I did a Perseid watch for some 2 hours, very hazy with intermittent light cloud and almost continuous lightning flashes. Almost predictably I only saw 4 meteors all night, all of them approaching zero magnitude.  It was a case of "where have all the Perseids gone"  long time passing.  Albeit the Perseids have declined quite dramatically in recent years, especially compared with the 1970's and 80's, CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED THIS YEAR?  with only 4 Perseids seen by myself.  Hoping for much better luck in 2021 !   

[theropod]

From my north central Arkansas USA location the Perseids were indeed on the low end of the displays I’ve seen in the past. The up side was a greater percentage of fireballs. My wife and I saw a long duration Perseid that crossed 3/4 of our viewable sky, changed colors 3 times and left a persistent train. We also saw a few alpha Capricornids, all of which were fireballs. These entered from the west, were bright gold and had very defined heads. One of these stuttered as if it were tumbling at a stupid high RPM. This was Saturday night. Since then a bend in the jet stream has ended our summer delight, and we’ve had 3.75” of rain over the past 3 days. Clouds have been pervasive even when it isn’t actively raining. It’s 8:30 am here, and the fog is far to dense to fly a small plane, much less see the sky. I managed to capture 4-5 small Perseids, but I’m disappointed to say the least.

Edited August 13, 2020 by theropod
Typo

[BRADLEY 1953]

Thanks theropod,  it is interesting that you too saw less meteors, and once again an higher percentage of bright ones.  Actually you did quite well considering your last observation was some  2/3 days before the predicted maximum.

[theropod]

Yes, we were lucky to get the viewing time we did. While only scant clouds are out right now some big storms are forecast for tonight. Maybe I can have a couple hour window before they roll in. While frustrated I’m not throwing in the towel just yet. The Perseids are spread out over several days, so hope springs eternal.

I also find it curious that such a high percentage of this year’s falls were large. Sorting of comet material like this isn’t a thing, is it? Has earth’s gravity worked to rake down all the smaller bits and we are now left with bigger hunks less effected by our gravity well? Of course our observations could be anecdotal, and others saw no such clastic sorting.

[theropod]

The storms held off until near daylight, and I stayed out until I just couldn’t stay awake anymore. The pattern of mostly large fireballs has extended into last night. I saw at least 20 very nice Perseids, and most left nice trains. One was exceptional and bright as an arc welder. Of course each and every one fell out of frame and I didn’t manage to put a single one into a data file. Still, just getting a window between storms was good enough. By next August a shiny new DSLR and wide angle lens will be riding on my tracker. Maybe the satellite swarms won’t be in place by then.

[Wyvern]

Managed some "radio observations" from Mid Wales. Pretty dreadful conditions visually with 80%+ cloud cover and thunderstorms for most of the time. Picked up max of 51 pings on the 11th-12th Aug in the 4-5am (BST) slot.

A couple of screenshots are attached with graphs for the observed days.

Les

[Alan White]

We had a CPAC meteor watch on Tuesday night at our dark site n the Essex coast.
Poor sky but the section needed was mainly clear.
We did see meteors, but not a big shower.
We did however see much lightning to the South of us, as it crept closer we crept home.