Spectacular Perseid Meteor Showers
Extraordinary Celestial Moments
As an indifferent star-gazer at best, I am naturally skeptical about astronomy geek predictions of “spectacular” celestial events. They usually leave me wondering why I got up at 2:00 a.m. and risked mosquito or frostbite for sights that turned out to be ho-hum.
Last night, however, brought a convergence that was difficult to resist.
For a solid month, news media have been all atwitter about the approach of the Perseid Meteor Shower. I have never paid much attention to this annual event. I am content to get my shooting-star fix during Orionid Shower in October, when I customarily spend pre-dawn hours in a deer stand. However, I have been needing to get up to my duck club to clear beaver work from drains and since the location in rural Chariton County is perfect for stargazing, the time seemed right.
I arrived around 10:00 p.m. with plenty of time to stop by the cabin. I unpacked my clothes for tomorrow’s project and turned on the water heater and air conditioning. These light chores done, I grabbed a cold beverage, my ThermaCell mosquito chaser and my folding recliner out of the truck and parked myself on the lawn, facing northeast as instructed by EarthSky.org.
One glance showed the half-moon was still a little above the western horizon, obscuring all but the brightest stars, so I fetched my camera out of the truck, hoping to catch a few meteor tracks. By the time I finished fiddling with that, the moon was gone, and the show was on.