My meteor image was selected for the Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD) today, October 11th, thanks!

I have updated the page to reflect the correct time for the fireball (or bolide) as provided by Thomas Ashcraf. He has a very comprehensive webpage for that date, highly recommended. I had already noticed that my camera clock was off by a few minutes and Thomas was able to provide exact timing.

Also new on the bolide page is a daytime photograph of the camera location relative to the star party.

Thanks for all email comments!

There was a nice display of meteors during the OTSP. Some sporadic and some from the minor meteor showers going on. Yet one meteor outshined them all. A bolide happened around 2:24 2:19 CDT Tuesday morning. It was spectacular. Lighting up the entire area for a moment. Wow.

I had a camera in the right place at the right time, what luck! Once in a lifetime picture of a brilliant meteor over the star party. Click here or the little image to the right for the picture!

Tuesday morning will be the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. This is one of the best know meteor showers since its a very dependable performer (averaging over 60 meteors per hour). The timing is also good. Occurring in summer with warm weather and people out late its a great introduction to watching meteor showers.

This year the moon is 80% of full on Monday night/Tuesday morning. Your best strategy is to take a nap until 2:00am Tuesday morning and start observing then. At that time the moon will have set and the sky will be dark.

Sure you can stay up all night and you’ll likely see several bright meteors per hour but you’ll miss seeing the fainter ones in the moon light. My personal experience is that observing a meteor shower under the full moon is less than exciting. The darkness of night sprinkled with shooting stars is the magic that draws me to out.

With this years moon light I have no plans to travel to a dark site. That and the weather forecast does not look good for Tuesday morning here in eastern Kansas. So I’ll observe from my rural site and hope for some clear skies!

I wanted to go out to the Flint Hills Thursday, January 3rd for my first view of the Quadrantids meteor shower but mother nature thought otherwise. It looked like it might be clear but the wind was howling all day. But in the end it clouded up. I did not spend much time outside that night, it was cold, very windy and partly cloudy. From my observatory I never say a single meteor.

It seems the showers peak was a bit early according the the Nasa teams report.

This moment, Friday December 14th at noon, is the peak of the Geminid meteor shower. Despite some clouds I watched the sky for about one hour around midnight on Thursday night (13th). From my observatory I do not have the best skies or  unobstructed horizons but I was surprised at the rate I was seeing.  Over the sixty minutes of observing time I saw over 90 meteors. Wow. I bet the show was great by morning, unfortunately I was clouded over.

Sunday night, August 12th, in the Flint Hills to see the Perseids meteor shower with Photon Phil and Richard. We got lucky that a storm mostly missed our location. The small infrared satellite image to the right is 02:45 UTC August 13, or about 10:00pm local time.

The first few hours after dark had many nice earth grazers. After midnight when the showers radiant had risen higher in the sky we were seeing about 60 meteors per hour by my rough count. The storm complex pictured did move SE so we were affected by intermittent light clouds. This had a more adverse impact on photography than visual so I stopped taking pictures around 1:00am. This was actually a good thing since I just enjoyed the show rather than tending to equipment. Around 4:00am, about an hour before the end of true darkness, the radiant was close to being overhead and we saw a flurry of activity. Overall a very nice meteor shower. I have several images to process so I may have something to post later.

It happens that I was lucky twice that night. Around 9:30pm I was drift aligning my telescope and walked away from my equipment for a short while. When I returned I knelt down by my scope and immediately heard a rattling sound. It is an unmistakable sound. Not having my headlamp on I yelled over at the guys to bring a flashlight. Naturally I slowly backed away from the shape. It was a rattlesnake that decided he liked my tarp and was coiled up beside the cables. I was fortunate that he warned me rather than striking out, he had only been a foot or two away. Since there was no harm done we nudged him off into the taller grass away from the site. As he left I judged his length to be about two foot or so.

So I was lucky that night; my first good meteor shower in over a year and no snakebite.

Two weeks from today,  on the night of August 12th, is the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. Conditions are nearly ideal for us in the midwest this year. The showers peak is around midnight CDT and the radiant will rise about 22:00 CDT.  Lets hope for clear skies.