Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Halo on August 12, 2007, 01:57:10 PM
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Tonight is supposed to be another great annual meteor shower. I can't remember the last time I've seen a good one. Way too many lights in suburbia, often cloudy, and I'm too lazy to drive into the dark country for better viewing although I've done that once or twice and the results were okay.
Growing up in Southern Indiana, you could lie on the grass and lose yourself in infinity in awe at so many stars going on forever. As in the song, truly diamonds in the sky.
Moving to big city 'burbs has been good news / bad news: more light all night long for safety and visibility, but a loss of the deep dark mysterious.
Just curious -- do you enjoy meteor showers and do you regularly get to see good ones?
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I guess it depends on where in the world your watching, cause over here in Iraq last night I didn't see squat.
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Nope, seen sprinkles... but not a good shower. Got three sons, who all enjoy an outing to see if we can see one.
Did see the entire beauty of the milky way when we lived out in CA though. went out into the mojave, flipped the lights off & sat for about 5 minutes & the sky just lit up.
Must be spectacular to see that out on the seas, where there's a reflection of it.
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I may get up early tomorrow morning and check it out. So far I heard the most was about 1 per minute before sunrise. There really isnt a good place to sit and watch them at around here.
It sucks living in an apartment.
No yard and around here if you are out in the country watching them, chances are a cop will show up because you are a "suspicious person"
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It's a northern hemisphere thing, and I mostly see reports of best time/places for sighting in the US, so Iraq may be out of the sight.
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I sure have, we used to travel from miami to orlando and back quite a bit. there are some stretches of the florida turnpike where you are far from city lights and we have experienced some spectacular meteor showers. also I spent four years in the navy forty-two months of them aboard a destroyer. that allowed for plenty of star gazing while underweigh.
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I saw a meteor last night.
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I haven't seen a meteor shower for many years, but I hear what you're saying about the backwoods viewing being the best.
My family has a home up in Crown Point, on Lake Champlain. There is literally nothing around there that lights up the night after 9pm or so. On clear nights, you can see just about every star up there, and the black spaces inbetween aren't really black, but a gray mist pattern almost, which are just stars even further away. It's a wonderful sight.
Then, here at home in CT, about 10 miles or so from Hartford, Im lucky if I can see the Big Dipper :rolleyes:
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When I was a great deal younger, about 21 years ago, I took off for a motorcycle ride.
Lasted about 2 years :)
Best Night was out in Wyoming. Got on a dirt road and just rode for the entire day out into the middle of nowwhere. Camped that night on top of a Butte.
No moon. No Town visible, so far off the highway that I couldn't see a man made light.
There were so many stars I could see my camp clearly. Couple of meteorites just lit the sky up.
Was breathtaking, will never forget the site, have yet to see it duplicated.
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The good thing about this meteor shower is that there isn't any moon to interfere, so you can see the more fainter meteors.
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ROC that's really cool. I'm doing that asap..
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I watched one in the middle 1960's that was spectacular.
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ya is the Perseid meteor shower tonight, no moon so extra dark too. just layed out on my lounge floor looking out the balcony doors at maybe 1/8 the sky, live next to the river in middle of town so alot of light pollution but saw 4 directly and a bunch in my perifery, would be amazing out in the countryside.
prob be better later, but I'll be asleep then, times 12am here right now
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Caught an awesome one in Virginia in '93. Hundreds and hundreds of meteors for over 2 hours. Makes ya look at us and the universe a little different after seeing it.
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Originally posted by VWE
I guess it depends on where in the world your watching, cause over here in Iraq last night I didn't see squat.
The shower is tonight....but it might be daytime there.
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When I lived in Arizona a few months, I was taken with the clarity of the sky at night, and the closeness of the stars.
Later I learned we were at 4000 ft elevation, so the stars were actually closer.
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Meteor Echoes from Radar at Lake Kickapoo, Texas On-Line. USAF Radar at Lake Kickapoo, Texas
http://science.nasa.gov/audio/meteor/navspasur.m3u
67.24 MHz. SSB Meteor Detection at Roswell On-Line. TV-Video Channel 4 Meteor burst. The slowly changing or steady tones are usually caused by aircraft or ground wave signals. The sudden pings that sometimes last for several seconds and then fade are typically meteor activity. (Much more awesome to listen to. Sounds spacey)
http://science.nasa.gov/audio/meteor/meteorburst.m3u
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moot, that is so kewl!
Word of advice, if a very cute girl at a koa campground out around southern Idaho invites you to her tent because her kerosene lamp is broken and she doesn't know how to fix it, Don't say you had a long day and toss her a flashlight.
She was gone the next morning and left me pictures of what I missed :D
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:lol That does sound familiar!
About the Perseids, now that I think about it, I believe their trajectory out in space is more or less southbound, which would be a good reason for only being visible from the northern hemisphere. So Iraq might not be out of the picture.
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I was up at 4am today and did see some, a couple of real nice ones that created a bight luminescent trail for about 10 seconds after it streaked across the sky.
I remember as a kid seeing a satellite cross the sky and thinking how rare that was but this morning it looked like LAX with all the satellites I saw criscrossing the sky.
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is there a website that gives the heads up for the next shower?
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I know websites that give links to golden showers.. :noid
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Jhook, I've got a link to a schedule at home. I'll post it later.
Saw a few nice ones yesterday evening. My kiddos missed em though.
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Not much on showers up here. But without fail,every winter we get the full display of Northern Lights. Sometimes not so colorful, kind of dull......................... .then there's times the color is so vivid and bright ya just have to pull over and enjoy.
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Stretched out awhile on the back deck lounger but in the suburbs was lucky to count maybe 40 stars out of the jillions way out there. Saw what I guess was a satellite, bright as any star, slow and distinct horizon to horizon streak.
Glad to hear many of you have seen such spectaculars. Always something to look forward to, especially when we sometimes get to the declining empty spaces on Earth here and there.
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I was outside for a bit after midnight Central time and saw 4 of them. One was really great and the others were quick streaks.
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Meteor showers have predictable yearly schedules...
http://www.amsmeteors.org/showers.html (http://www.amsmeteors.org/showers.html)
As a amateur radio operator, I use meteor showers to be able to make radio contacts with hams I wouldn't normally be able to under other propagational circumstances.
These meteors are generally no bigger than a grain of sand, but when they enter earth's atmosphere and begin to burn up in the higher regions of the ionisphere, they "ionize" that tiny strata where the burn trail is, causing radio signals in the 25 to 450 mHz range to go further than they normally would without the meteor ionization.
The Amateur Radio Relay League's 28 mHz 10 meter "contest" in December is set to coincide with an annual meteor shower, so that during years of low sunspot activity (like now), there is at least "some" chance at longer distance propagation using meteor contacts.
The skills it takes to make contacts under this kind of propagation is intense.
When you get a meteor "ping" you have to work FAST to exchange the required information...at best, you may have 45 to 50 seconds (at 28 mHz) before the meteor ionization is gone....fail to get it done means you very well might have a busted QSO that won't count in your score.
The next meteor might not have the same characteristics to the same geograpical area.
Some meteor showers have a low (meteors/hour) rate, like 15-30...some have upwards of 60 to 70.
You also have to be there at times when the shower will "peak".
73 de K5TEN
68ROX
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Back in the late 80s I stayed up late one night and viewed the Perseid meteor shower. I managed to see 60 within an hour including a really bright greenish one that was directly overhead. Very spectacular. The weather has been somewhat unreliable since...