Disappointing Perseids

2am, and clear skies over Northern California.
Still, after 1 hour in my backyard, I've seen only 5 or 6 shooting stars.
Nothing as spectacular as the 2 or 3 / minutes from Perseids 2002.
Mars is beautifull in the Eastern sky, but I'm going to check-out
Venus (hills).

Anyone with a more exciting report on 2005 Perseids ?

Rob

Rob Dekker wrote:
2am, and clear skies over Northern California.
Still, after 1 hour in my backyard, I've seen only 5 or 6 shooting stars.
Nothing as spectacular as the 2 or 3 / minutes from Perseids 2002.
Mars is beautifull in the Eastern sky, but I'm going to check-out
Venus (hills).

Anyone with a more exciting report on 2005 Perseids ?

Rob

It is overcast in San Diego this early AM. A Perseid meteor would have
to drop within a mile or so for me to see it (if I was foolishly looking
:-) ) ...

It should be much better seeing up in the mountains or desert though,
but we didn't venture out there this year.

Are the Perseids well positioned for seeing in the west coast (USA) this
year? I'm not sure ...

Rob Dekker wrote:
2am, and clear skies over Northern California.
Still, after 1 hour in my backyard, I've seen only 5 or 6 shooting stars.
Nothing as spectacular as the 2 or 3 / minutes from Perseids 2002.
Mars is beautifull in the Eastern sky, but I'm going to check-out
Venus (hills).

Anyone with a more exciting report on 2005 Perseids ?

Rob


I started viewing at two, with my scope set up for photography.
I fell asleep at four thirty, and I hadn't seen more than seven
meteors,
and only two bright ones. Unbelievable. With more than an hour's
worth
of wide field exposures in various parts of the sky, but centering on
the
radiant, I did not record a single meteor on my digital SLR. Beautiful
sky, though, in San Geronimo CA.

Art

Rob Dekker wrote:
2am, and clear skies over Northern California.
Still, after 1 hour in my backyard, I've seen only 5 or 6 shooting stars.
Nothing as spectacular as the 2 or 3 / minutes from Perseids 2002.
Mars is beautifull in the Eastern sky, but I'm going to check-out
Venus (hills).

Anyone with a more exciting report on 2005 Perseids ?

Rob

Don't give up yet! Although the peak is said to have occurred over
North America during the daytime yesterday, according to space dot com
they said "Sky watchers are thus encouraged to watch during the predawn
hours of Friday, Aug. 12 and again during the early morning hours of
Saturday."

Some sources I've seen put the Perseids between August 8th-14th,
another I saw said from July 17th-August 24th. Maybe you'll get lucky
tonight and see a freak stream of particles? From what I've read, for
the Perseids some say one per minute is a good show, one every 10
minutes is a bad show (which is precisely in accord with what you have
experienced :^( Good luck tonight.

(Here in Central Florida we lament every Summer not having seen clear
skies long enough to drive our scopes to a dark sky site, or to even be
able to do home viewing, since the Spring, literally! We regularly
joke about it in our club's online chat room, and at our Astronomy club
meetings in the planetarium one of our members has the task of
presenting the skies this month, we all laugh when it's his turn, as
the last couple of years it has been the same, cloudy all Summer, so we
don't get to apply his information. I just watch www.nightskylive.net
and remember how it used to be until October comes. At least you folks
can see the sky.)

Clear skies!!! Jason H.

Rob Dekker wrote:
2am, and clear skies over Northern California.
Still, after 1 hour in my backyard, I've seen only 5 or 6 shooting stars.
Nothing as spectacular as the 2 or 3 / minutes from Perseids 2002.
Mars is beautifull in the Eastern sky, but I'm going to check-out
Venus (hills).

Anyone with a more exciting report on 2005 Perseids ?

Astronomy is not my field but as I understand it that was simply the most likely day for the peak.

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