The earth will be well positioned to see the spectacle of the Perseid Meteor showers tonight. According to the NASA website, we may be able to see as many as two a minute. That’s assuming, of course, that we live in a place that still has sky.
Even in my little coastal town, it’s getting harder and harder to see stars. Houses keep their yard lights on all night. Stores have brighter and brighter signs. Soon, there’ll be a new grocery store up the street from our house which I’m certain will have a brightly lit parking lot. Fewer and fewer of us are actually able to see the night sky, and it makes me sad to think of how many of our children are growing up without ever having lain on their backs and drawn connect-the-dot pictures with the stars.
Anyway, enough of the wistful lamentations: if you can stay up late enough and can find a dark patch of sky, go on out and have a look. I’m excited by the prospect of seeing a meteor shower; at 38, I’ve never seen one and, tonight, I intend to remedy that.
(photo courtesy of NASA)
It is sad that the night sky is so polluted with artificial light and airborne detritus from civilization.
Long ago, while standing in formation in the pre-dawn darkness, my unit was treated to an incredible meteor shower. The flashes of light were almost constant. We all stood there at parade rest with our eyes on the sky, undisturbed by our drill instructor who was also looking up, and glad for perhaps the first time that our training started at such an early hour. It wasn’t the Perseid shower, being November or so, but another one.
Mr. Weed was reading this AM that the space shuttle will be visible docking with the space station tonight too!
In a previous job, I would use meteor showers as part of passwords for admin accounts- Persiods, Leonids, Geminids, etc. No one of the other geeks who had reason to know the passwords ever knew what they meant… *sigh*
Damn, Weedwoman beat me to it! I had just read on a local news station’s website that we can see Endeavor around 9:40 and 11:15 tonight. It will be visible at certain times for the next few nights, apparently.