Chris Mullis from Mint Hill, North Carolina, captured this Perseid with his weathercam, which faces west and snaps one picture a minute all night long.
The peak of the Perseid meteor shower occurred August 11/12, and I was wondering if any of our readers took the opportunity to head out and observe it. If so, please email a brief report to me at
mbakich@astronomy.com.
My wife, Holley, and I received a nice invitation from our friends Jim and Tammy Rufener, who live north of Milwaukee in Slinger, Wisconsin.
“You going anywhere to observe the meteor shower?” they asked. “Come on up to where it’s dark, and we’ll watch with you. Then we’ll cook breakfast.”
You know, the promise of dark skies is one thing, but we’ve eaten at Jim and Tammy’s before and they put on a great feed. Yum! You bet we’d be there.
We arrived at their home around 2 a.m. and headed down to the neighborhood pond, where, Jim told me, a company used to manufacture bricks. Accompanying us were two of their children, Quinn and Bryce, and three of Quinn’s friends.
I stepped out of our pickup and immediately realized I had underdressed. I know it’s mid-August, but, people, this is Wisconsin. Besides, the proximity of the pond cranked up the humidity to near bone-chilling.
Not to worry. Jim and Tammy took their golf cart back up to the house and returned with armfuls of blankets. As we settled down to observe, Holley and I — in adjoining recliners — had three blankets atop us and one more acting as a pillow. Bring on the Perseids!
The shower was good, but not great. A layer of alternating-thickness cumulus clouds denied us any faint meteors. Still, in about 75 minutes of observing, Holley — the only one of us keeping track — counted 38 Perseids and two sporadics. A sporadic is a meteor not associated with any shower.
Although none of the meteors lit up the landscape, we did see a handful as bright or brighter than Jupiter (magnitude –2.3), eliciting some “Ooohs” and “Aaaahs” from our small contingent. And the two sporadics were also pretty cool. One blazed at magnitude –2, and the other broke apart at the end of its run.
The four teenage girls headed back to the house first. Some 20 minutes later, Tammy got a phone call saying, “Mom, we’re starving!” After quick (but high-quality) looks at Jupiter and the Moon through a 3-inch refractor I brought along, we all headed up to the house for part two of our Perseid party.
First up on the menu were two loaves of the sweet, sticky concoction known as monkey bread. Oh, my! The cinnamon-y goodness enflamed my hunger and made me think I’d been observing for 75 hours. Then, in succession, we enjoyed honeydew melon, Jim’s eggs (two varieties), bacon, and hash browns. At one point during our feeding frenzy (OK,
my feeding frenzy), Bryce handed me a piece of toast on which he’d spread a thick layer of Nutella. Everyone laughed when all I could think of saying was, “I love you, man!”
So, thanks Jim and Tammy, for having an interest in our wonderful science and for being such great friends. What’s that, you say? Next year?
Done deal.