Daily Life

There is an annual event where the Earth swings through a trail of rubble left behind from a comet (there are several, actually) called the Perseid Meteor Shower.  We see this as shooting stars (meteors) for a night or two in August.

From The New York Times:

“The Perseids occur when Earth runs into pieces of debris floating in the solar system that were left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The 17-mile-wide dirty snowball orbits the sun about once every 133 years. It made its last close pass by the sun in 1992.

For this week’s shower, Jupiter’s gravity has tugged together at least three meteor streams left by the comet into Earth’s path. Our planet will run into a cluster of leftovers from Comet Swift-Tuttle’s rendezvous in 1862, 1479 and 1079.”

So early this morning, about 3am, I got up and went out into the Barrow Backyard Observatory (i.e.: I was too tired to actually drive out into the country where there is less light!) and tried to photograph a few of the meteors.  They just appear as streaks.  I did see several (many are viewable with the naked eye) that were brighter than these, but they were between camera shots.  Most of these I didn’t see when the camera was shooting them.

Click on the photos a couple of times to see them full sized.  BACK to return!

To the left of center near the top.

Here’s another one: just to the left above the power pole.

Nope…none here…just a nice photo.  I found I had to take four or five photos to get one meteor.

Just to the right of the power pole.

There is a little short one just to the right of the arm on the power pole

Next:  More meteors, pointing at other parts of the yard!

~Curtis in /\/\onTana! {!-{>