Perseids meteor shower peaking tonight

muckish

Perseids meteor shower peaks tonight. So if there's a break in this damn cloud cover have a look out to the north east. Best time is from midnight to sunrise, the hours just before dawn being the best. Full moon will drown out most of the feinter ones but the Perseids are know for long bright "streak" meteors. Even in urban light polluted areas, find a place in the shadows with a view of the sky and you'll be amazed at what you can see.

image from astronomy ireland. www.astronomy.ie
Fingers crossed for some clear sky and post any successful photos!

clear skies

fizzycyst

There was broken cloud in Waterford last night but unfortunately didn't see any meteors

A low fog has descended on the city now so unless this clears visibility will be 0.

MUSEIST

I'm not in peking tonight

Winger_PL

Unfortunately, looking at the satellite pictures of the area, I doubt anyone in Ireland will see anything...

http://met.ie/sat/euro-v.asp

eskimocat

Last night a bunch of us seen what we think was a meteor falling to earth! It was just like a fireball! (we were all sober by the way )

It was travelling quite fast, just below the thickest cloud/fog layer. Sadly it dropped out of view before anyone thought to get a pic. ( we were all too busy standing around arguing if it was definitely a meteor or not! :pac:)

I couldn't see any tail, however it went through occasional patches of fog in places ( it seemed to get bright and fade depending on how thick the fog was) and I believe that we just may not have been able to see the tail from the angle we observed it at. Sadly because we were observing this in Sligo town, there were too many buildings etc in the way to see where it was landing etc. I think it was really quite big too.

BTW It was definitely not a flare, i have seen flares in action and it was not one of those. This was quite a large ball of red, honestly it looked like something out of a film lol

fizzycyst

I saw a fireball a few years ago. I was outside my front door with a friend and suddenly a huge meteorite with a firey tail coming from it raced down towards the horizon, then there was this big flash like lightning (it was night time/pitch dark at the time). It was absolutely amazing!

I looked in to afterwards and apparently it happened somewhere in Wales, that was crazy in itself because it seemed like it was in the next field or something.

torrentum

Perseids are known as 'old faithful' but to be honest I see them as a 'serial disappointer'. I saw an excellent display in 1992, and I've watched every year thats been cloud-free since them (you'd be amazed how cloudy Irish skies are in August, almost always cloudy for the perseids) but even if the skies are clear, it's meteors are never that impressive.

Wait 'till December 13th/14th.
The Geminids are excellent and alway put on a good show.
The skies are usually clear believe it or not and you dont need to wait till midnight for darkness, you can see falling stars at teatime.
Only drawback is the freezing temperatures that accompany clear december evenings,but if you wrap up well it's a non issue. A few years ago, I saw 400+ Geminid meteors in a couple of hours.

muckish

torrentum wrote: »

Wait 'till December 13th/14th.
The Geminids are excellent and alway put on a good show.
The skies are usually clear believe it or not and you dont need to wait till midnight for darkness, you can see falling stars at teatime.

Unfortunately this year there'll be a full moon for the Geminids and the Leonides in November as well. Not a great year for meteor viewing. ANyway no breaks in the cloud last night.

Calibos

torrentum wrote: »

Perseids are known as 'old faithful' but to be honest I see them as a 'serial disappointer'. I saw an excellent display in 1992, and I've watched every year thats been cloud-free since them (you'd be amazed how cloudy Irish skies are in August, almost always cloudy for the perseids) but even if the skies are clear, it's meteors are never that impressive.
............

My experience too except for the last bit unless by 'Never that impressive' you mean in numbers. My experience is that the two or three years since '92 !!! that its been cloud free in this part of the country, while the numbers were never impressive, the actual meteors themselves are better than any other display. Give me the slower track and longer lasting glowing smokey trail tver the ultra quick thin bright streak of most of the others any day.

Astronomy is actually a very reliable method of weather forecasting tbh. Full moon week? Clear. New Moon Week? Cloudy. Meteor shower week? Cloudy. Lunar/Stellar/PLanetary conjunctions and occultation day/weeks? Cloudy. Solar/Lunar Eclipses? Cloudy. Purchase of new Telescope or Eyepieces? Month of cloud. When you add those predictive indicators to some well established ones like, School holidays, exams and back to school times one pretty much has the whole year covered.

Iancar29

Intermittent clouds for tonight in the leinster region... im on a night shift tonight so might hang out the back for my lunch if i feel up to it...

Fingers crossed

torrentum

muckish wrote: »

Unfortunately this year there'll be a full moon for the Geminids and the Leonides in November as well. Not a great year for meteor viewing. ANyway no breaks in the cloud last night.

Even with a full moon, geminids are better than most. Youd still see about 30-30/hour IMHO. Agree with the above poster about the glowing train, perseids definitely do that best.

Iancar29

Things are looking good for tonight! ...

I know the peak has passed but we would still see some!

FIngers crossed!

John.Icy

Went out and lay on he ground for awhile...Only saw 3, but one I did see was stunning, extremely bright and had a huge streak...amazing.

Best clear night in along time....How useful this sky could have been in that KP8 storm awhile back. :pac:

thetonynator

Saw 2 of them a few minutes ago, one like the big one John.Icy described.

Looked pretty cool!

Trogdor

Went out for about an hour earlier and saw 9 or 10. Had the camera out and was experimenting with timelapse really but caught one:

Might add in the link for the short timelapse video when it's rendered.

EDIT:
http://vimeo.com/27701674
Added just a very short timelapse for anyone that's interested.

delw

trogdor wrote: »

Went out for about an hour earlier and saw 9 or 10. Had the camera out and was experimenting with timelapse really but caught one:

Might add in the link for the short timelapse video when it's rendered.

EDIT:
http://vimeo.com/27701674
Added just a very short timelapse for anyone that's interested.

thats a smashing picture Trogdor,cheers

muckish

Well 1st clear night is ages so I set up the camera in the back garden to take 10 second exposures every 15 seconds. Didn't get a single perside! But a few other interesting images from the night's viewing. Great photos by the other Contributors.


Rainbow colours through the clouds.



idefix & Ariane 42b flyby



solar flare off xss-11 flyby


Solar flare close up

muckish

What a perseid looks like from space. Taken from onboard the ISS

gbee

muckish wrote: »

http:l

http://www.theweatherspace.com/news/links/81411e.html

Don't think I'd like to be in space with all that debris coming in.

muckish

Clearish skies again last night, so I set the camera up: 25 second @f4.0 iso 400 exposures every 30 seconds. Low and behold I caught something. Is it a Perseid or is it a satellite? No satellites visible according to sat tracker at that time and direction. Could be a flare off a dim satellite though. I'm not convinced it's a perseid but what do ye think......?

Calibos

Remember the ISS is traversing our skies for the next week or so. Check Heavens above.com for times for your location. Clear skies forecast and a very bright near overhead pass tonight.

amacachi

torrentum wrote: »

Perseids are known as 'old faithful' but to be honest I see them as a 'serial disappointer'. I saw an excellent display in 1992, and I've watched every year thats been cloud-free since them (you'd be amazed how cloudy Irish skies are in August, almost always cloudy for the perseids) but even if the skies are clear, it's meteors are never that impressive.

Wait 'till December 13th/14th.
The Geminids are excellent and alway put on a good show.
The skies are usually clear believe it or not and you dont need to wait till midnight for darkness, you can see falling stars at teatime.
Only drawback is the freezing temperatures that accompany clear december evenings,but if you wrap up well it's a non issue. A few years ago, I saw 400+ Geminid meteors in a couple of hours.

Parseids were decent last year. Unfortunately as stated elsewhere there'll be another damn fullish moon for the Geminids.

muckish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxYNX2XaKkg