Posts Tagged ‘camping and astronomy’

“Thank you, Dad! Before this day, I’ve never seen a meteor before.”

It was about 1AM when David, who just turned 8, decided he was getting tired, and I don’t blame him as his normal bed time is around 10PM. He had spent the evening gathering up kindling that he could find on the ground, running back and forth, and then roasting hotdogs and marshmallows in anticipation of seeing shooting stars later as the night went on.

Our trailer is parked in a very shady area which is awesome on those hot, sunny days.  The shade does keep the site considerably cooler as well as the trailer than if it were under direct sun all day. But that very same shade, at night, is more than an inconvenience for gazing at stars.  There is a small window of a canopy to the sky between some of the tops of the tree branches which allows a view of a few constellations but it’s impossible to take in the entire sky.

During our campfire, I strained my neck while looking up through that canopy hoping to catch a glimpse of some Perseid meteors. There were a couple that I managed to see – in fact one was dazzling as it streaked across what I could see of the sky and left a long trail of light before disappearing. Amazing to realize that these meteors are but the size of a grain of sand and are traveling at 140,000 km/h!

From the reports I had read, the best display of the Perseid Meteor shower would take place after midnight. After the marshmallows and hotdogs were roasted, C., David and I hiked over to a very dark part of the park with a blanket in hand. The grass was dewy and damp, and the blanket didn’t help much as we lay on our backs, staring up at the sky.

It was a bit disappointing at first to C. and David I think. From how I had talked about the Perseids, I think they had been anticipating quite a show – and it was a pretty good show between midnight and 1AM  – but apparently became even more spectacular toward the morning hours and in many parts of the world. I was able to see a number of the shooting stars blazing across the heavens before C. and David were able to pick one out. But finally, one of the heavenly bits of debris streaked across from the north east to the south and David exclaimed, “I saw one!! I saw one!! Wow, was that ever cool!”

Although most reports advised to look to the north east, the fact was that if you just looked up into the heavens and allowed your peripheral vision to work, you could see the meteors anywhere in the sky.  Some were seen in the south, the north, the east and in fact, a couple of the most dazzling ones we saw were on our way back to the trailer, David being quite tired, in the western sky.

I would have liked to have stayed up longer mys elf, but I need my 7 hours sleep and David needs his attention in the morning.  All in all, between the three of us during the evening up to about 1AM, we probably saw about 30 meteors of varying brightness. But tonight is another night, and we should still be able to view some Perseids as well as just after dusk, the triple conjunction of the moon with the stars Saturn, Mars and Venus all close to the thin crescent moon.