Last weekend there was a meteor shower. Supposedly people were supposed to be able to see it pretty well in the northern hemisphere. That is unless of course you are contending with street lights, trees, clouds and a blindingly bright full moon.
My wife, our friend, Shaun, and I were all geared up to go check out this meteor shower in the early hours of the morning on Saturday. We set our alarms, got up at 3:15 am and headed North on the interstate to try to get away from the city lights. We pulled off the freeway after a few miles and drove further into the country. Unfortunately we weren't that far into "the country" because everywhere we looked there were street lights. And if there weren't lights there were trees lining the road. To top it off it was pretty goddamn cloudy as well.
We eventually settled on a section of road facing a field which afforded a decent view of the sky. The only drawback was a ridiculously bright street light directly behind us that would shine for about 30 seconds and then go out for a few minutes. It repeated this cycle for the entire night.
We waited outside my car in the chilly early morning air for a little over an hour and only saw a few shooting stars, but the ones we did see were the brightest I've ever seen. We were also hoping to glimpse the ISS shooting across the sky low on the horizon, but it was too cloudy so around 5 am we packed it up and went home to get some more sleep.
I've drawn what would have been the ideal setting to watch the meteor shower: clear sky, no lights, no moon and Ninja Turtles pointing out constellations and shooting stars. To close out this post I'll leave you with a very informational song about shooting stars.
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