First successful Perseid watch

[RikM]

It was a great Perseid show last night from my point of view.

I had a mix of broken cloud cover but with several long spells of gloriously clear sky. VLM ~4.5, I could clearly see 6 of 7 stars in Ursa Minor. The Milky Way was the clearest I have seen from home, visible overhead as faint misty stripe with a gap between Deneb and Sadr.

My youngest Son and I sat out on deck chairs from 22:00 DST, Matty saw 9(?) and I saw 6 nice bright meteors, several of which left misty trails, before I packed him off to bed at 23:00. I stuck it out until 01:30 and added another 23 before I wimped out and crept into bed. I saw no obvious sporadics, they were all heading the right way for Perseids.

I have kept a rough log of times with a few comments about brightness and location, though I'm not sure quite how to write up an observing report for a meteor shower? It was nice to just sit out, using nothing more complicated than eyeballs, pen and paper and a watch and really just enjoy the sky.

If we only get the council to turn off the street lights after midnight, and if I could get my neighbours to properly shield their car-port lights, it would have been perfect.

Rik