Meteor Shower - Bedford A.S.

[daz]

MiniDaz and I dragged ourselves out of bed at 2:15 this morning (which was hard having only got in it at 11!) and bundled up for the observing session at the observatory.

The sky was nice, some high cloud, but not enough to really get in the way, and by 3:30 this had gone anyway. One of my committe colleauges had done some research and determined that around 4:45 was likely to be the maximum. So, armed with cups of tea we settled into chairs and waited.

At around 3am, people started to drift in and over the course of the next hour we had around 30 people, all with chairs, mats or sleeping bags. Between 3 and 4am we saw around 15 meteors, two or three having nice bright green trails which drew 'oos' and 'aahs' from the gathered.

From 4am onwards, our total grew to around 40 confirmed sightings, of which about 10 were of the green flash variety. It was also at this time the temperature really dropped and ice started to form on the 12" dob we had out.

Throughout the morning, we had the observatory open and had the 16" tracking Saturn, which was nothing short of spectacular :saturn: . Many people who attended had not seen Saturn so it was a first for them, and having seen it in the scope they wanted to know whereabouts in the sky it was. So one of the more seasoned chaps got the green laser out and did a quick tour of the skies.

As dawn approached, we fired up SN to see when Mercury would be rising. I didn't note the time I'm afraid but we soon spotted it as it climbed above the roofline. It was followed shortly by a superb crescent moon.

I've now seen visually all the (current status) planets! Just wish I could image them as well!!

Got back home just after 7. Some toast and tea and back to bed for me. Andrew stayed up - more stamina than his old man!! He did really well and I'm chuffed he saw so many!

All in all, a great mornings observing - we had a lot of fun with our fellow nocturnals and look forward to the Geminids!

[geppetto]

What a great night Daz, pleased you enjoyed it

[FLO]

Good report Daz

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

I'm glad somebody saw some. Sounds like a good morning out, and back in time for nobody to notice.

Captain Chaos

[daz]

CC - it was an allowed excursion

A most enjoyable morning!