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Meteor Showers

Posted by michael on from the bring-your-umbrella dept.

Nick Davison writes: "This weekend promises another good meteor display with the Perseids expected to be falling at up to one a minute at around 6am PST Sunday morning. The big show of the year, however, is expected to be the Leonids that peak November 18th - they are expected to briefly peak at around 15,000/hour."

1 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Benn there ... done that by Pat__ · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was out watching the shower with a couple of friends and we did have a nice display.

    I don't know when exatly the peak was but we only had a chance before the moon rise (from ten till around midnight local time) and we were not disapointed. frenquency was about a star every couple of minutes, including about 15 with high magnitude and long trails :)

    A couple of tips for the first timers.
    - Get away from the city lights (and pullotion) as much as possible.
    - Have a good field of view because they will be all over the sky not just in the vicinity of perseus
    - Do NOT concentrate at the spot where they will come from (Perseus) rather about 40 degrees away, as odd as this may seem, the shooting stars around perseus won't leave a long trail (they will be coming towards you ) and you won't be seing much of them.

    PS the geeks that we are had to take a laptop to the middle of nowhere with Starry Night on it , as if the real sky was just not enough ;)

    http://www.starrynight.com/