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Perseid Meteor Shower To Peak This Weekend
Krishna Dagli writes "This weekend provides one of the year's best opportunities to see some "shooting stars". The annual Perseid meteor display is expected to peak on Friday and Saturday night. Meteors are bits of dust or rock that plunge into the Earth's atmosphere and burn up, making bright streaks in the sky. It does not take a large object to produce a visible meteor — most are the size of a grain of sand or a small pebble."
They're the aliens, trying to establish contact but getting attacked by the USAF.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Shoot, I missed most of it.
This year's Perseid shower is a dud, due to a nearly full moon.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I don't think we really needed the 3rd grade scienst lesson.
but a spelling one would be nice.
A great disturbance in the Force. It was like a million voices crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced as millions of Dads finally attempted to use their $600 Costco telescopes, only to realize they had thrown out their manuals with the box...
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
I like the formatting of this story, especially the use of the anchor tag. Very refreshing.
...looks like the posting's HTML got holed by one of the Perseids -- one of the tags got taken clean out!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I camped on the summit of a 14,000ft peak last night. I've never seen so many shooting stars despite the full moon and the light pollution of a distant city. It was beautiful... also cold.
"Well, you should have used the preview button!"
Editors? This is Slashdot. We don't need no stinking editors. Obviously.
I went out with my girlfriend tonight to take a look, but it pretty much sucked. I saw one blip and that was all. The moon was far too bright and made viewing impossible.
My hometown of Peekskill New york got hit with a meteorite back in the 90's. It crashed through the back of an old junker car belonging to 17 year old girl. She was in tears. Turned out she got about 80,000 USD for the rock and the car. It was only known car to be hit. The car and meteorite went on display in Museum Of Natural History and other museums around the world. It was also filmed going across sky in Washington. Every year around this time I hope for my car to get hit. A view of meteor in sky before it hit is on this cool meteor site:
http://fireball.meteorite.free.fr/index_en.html
As it seems closing tags is beyond people here is the correct link for those who can't be bothered going through the rigmarole of copy & paste.
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That's not true. The distinction between a meteor and a meteorite is that meteors do not fall all the way to the ground, and meteorites do.
This also isn't true. Stuff continues to move out there, so we don't pass through the exact same spot in the debris trail every year. How big the meteor shower is varies from year to year.
I'll let somebody else point out that the orbit is 133 years, not 150.
I'll let somebody else point out that the orbit is 133 years, not 150.
The orbit is 133 years, not 150.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
When is Leonid peaking?
'72, but fizzled out all together ten years later.
KFG
And in fact the meteor is the light trail itself, not the lump of matter that creates the light trail by burning (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/meteor). The lump is called a meteoroid and any part of it that hits the Earth as anything more than vapour is a meteorite.
Yay for dumbing down science for the masses.
Things like 'fud' and 'wishfulthinking' are perfectly valid as tags - if you want to search for stories that Slashdotters thought were FUD or wishful thinking. There's room for more than one tag - so something tagged 'linux', 'fud' and 'wishfulthinking' would allow people to, say, find stories about Linux that Slashdotters thought were fud (or wishful thinking) or just plainly about Linux.
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SImple - If I read anything about a meteor shower that is has the slightest chance of being visable to the naked eye. Then I know for a fact it will be one of the most misrable clodiest days for ages, even after few good solid weeks without a cloud in the sky.
:).
We had meteor forcast, its cloudy that even the clouds are obscured by clouds.
I there conclude that all these reports of meteor showrs are causing global warming - FIN
On Slashdot, you're reminded of stuff that matters a full year in advance!
Thanks!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It's a dupe because we've had reports about this on 2004/08/10, 2003/08/13, 2002/08/08, ...
I can almost see a pattern emerging... D'oh!
Deze sig is in 't Nederlands geschreven.
Lots of showers throughout the year, although the Perseids is generally the best.
The Leonids, Geminids, and Orionids are the next biggest showers. You can find out here:
Meteor Shower article.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Almost anybody who lives in the mountains of Colorado knows you don't need oxygen to climb a 14er. You say 10,000 feet requires oxygen? That means that all the people who are skiing at places like Crested Butte would need oxygen, since you get off the ski lift more than a thousand feet above that altitude. Skiing is also much more vigorous than flying a plane, but people don't go blind from lack of oxygen while doing it, even above 10,000 feet.
FAA regulations are overly cautious due to other circumstances which could create compound problems in which lives would be at stake. FAR 91.211 says that oxygen is required after 30 minutes of flying between 12,500 and 14,000 feet, or immediately when flying above 14,000 feet in a non-pressurized cabin. Supplemental oxygen is only suggested for flying at 10,000 feet during daylight, or 6,000 at night. But that's just a suggestion, not a requirement.
As for hypoxia during star gazing at 14,000 feet, this isn't a vigorous activity we're talking about. You'd likely not be starved for oxygen by merely laying on the ground.
Of course, none of this considers that the person who did the star gazing may have been acclimated to the altitude by spending months or years in high altitudes. When I was a kid in Colorado I saw more stars than I've ever seen anywhere else.