Perseid spotting!

tomcosgrave

So there I was, at about 1.30 this morning, having a final smoke before going to bed. I was standing in the driveway of my house, with a tiny view of the sky above - looking west out of the drive, you can just about see the constellation of Ursa Major (The Plough) and just above me would have Polaris. That's about it, the light pollution in Dublin is something awful :-(

Anyway I was looking out of the drive way and towards Ursa Major when a very bright trailing fireball streaks across the sky right in front of me, taking me totally by surprise! It lasted about 3 seconds, and I could make out the tail as the object broke up.

I wasn't looking for Perseids at all, although I knew they were around, I was just looking in the right place at the right time and managed to get an eyeful for a brief instant.

Anyone else seen anything Perseid related?

sunbeam

I had totally forgotten it was that time of year again. I'll have a look tonight.

We used to have lovely dark skies here, but alas got village lighting a few years ago...:(

albertw

I was out with some of the South Dublin Astro. Soc. folks in the Wicklow mountains last night looking at Mars and we were seeing one every few minutes, and quite a few sporadic ones also, there are a couple of other showers active at the moment.

The forecast for the weeknd isn't great, but it picks up for Wednesday night, unfortunately there is the full moon to contend with then. Its not going to be a good persied year.

The light pollution in Dublin is something awful :-(

Working on it :-)
I should have a submission in to Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown Co. Co. on their developmant plan in the next week. http://www.irishastronomy.org/ilpac if anyone wants to get involved. The Irish Light Pollution Awareness Campaign has been going for a couple of years but only recently getting formally organised, its supported by astronomical societies, envirnomentalists and wildlife folks (An Taisce, FoIE, greens etc.) and there are some engineers and local council folks involved also. It will also be the Irish Section of the International Dark Sky Association. I was going to post an announcement here about it later but since the topic came up I might as well mention it now. The formal launch is at Whirlpool. Please join the yahoo list from the page above if youre interested, or to contact us drop a mail to ilpac at irishastronomy dot org.

Cheers,
~Al
Irish Light Pollution Awareness Campaign
www.irishastronomy.org/ilpac
www.darksky.org

Sev

I think the moon's gonna interfere with the perseids this year

bartificer

On the actual night of the maximum it was of course cloudy where I was ... typical!

But on the night after tha maximum I spent two hours out side, one before the Moon rose from behind the large hill blocking most of my eastern view before midnight and one after the moon had rissen after midnight.

I have to say I was very dissapointed, I only saw a hand full of meteors in those two hours and only one of them left a short trail for about 2 seconds or so, the rest were really un-impressive. Hoopefully the Geminds are better!

Bart B.