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Perseid Meteor Showers
obfuscated writes "'Flying gravel bank' attacks the Earth's atmosphere; damage unknown. Visible now and peaking on August 12th, the Perseid meteor shower is back to trained and amateur sky watchers. At its peak as many as 60 or more shooting stars can be visible per hour from the Northern Hemisphere. This year's viewing should be especially good since the 'Earth is expected to encounter the core of the Perseid swarm, where meteoroid concentration is densest, next Monday.' Space.com as well as MSN has the full text."
1. Don't even bother with binocs, much less a scope.
2. Get outside of the city and lay on the hood of your car.
3.Bring a flashlight with a red filter to save your night vision.
4. The Perseids come from a point near the constellation Perseus (go figure). It's actually closer to Cassiopeia, which is much easier to find (it's the big W). Find this point for the best viewing.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
And of course he is exploiting the guy making the latte. Gawd I hate Nader. http://www.lp.org
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
You wont see anything unless the contellation Perseus is above your horizon, or at least very close to it. You may have a chance of catching some really cool earth-grazing ones...but if the radiant is below your horizon, your out of luck.
If cour curious, the radiant(the result of parallax making it seem to come from one point in the sky) is halfway between perseus and cassiopia(thats the 'W' Shaped one).
I've watched this shower for going on 20 years now, and it never dissapoints.
Saw this on the article over at Space.com:
Few Perseids are ever visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
So I guess you're out of luck, uh? (and me too, by the way)
Here's the story on being able to hear the Leonids?.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Meteor Photography:
Materials needed:
SLR Camera
50mm f/2 or faster lense, or even better -- a fisheye lense
400 or faster film -- multiple rolls are good
Tripod
Cable Release or self-timer
Procedure:
Set up your camera on its tripod outdoors on the night of the 12th or 13th. Point it near the radiant (a few degrees off to one side is good) and wait for the action to start. Then, connect your cable release or set your self-timer and open the lense for a 2-minute or so exposure. Exact times will vary depending on how light-polluted your location is, but that's about good. Then, every two minutes close the shutter and advance the film. You'll get a lot of pictures of star trails and hopefully a few really great shots of streaking meteors. If you see a really great one where your camera is pointing, go ahead and advance right then -- no point in fogging the film further.
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