I awakened at 02:30 this morning, got dressed in the dark, walked through my darkened house, and donned a down jacket and sock hat. I went out to the front porch with a cigar. Still in the dark, I lit my cigar with the view of only one eye, to keep the other eye dark-accommodated.
I'm just too old to throw a blanket on the damp grass, and gaze up at the full sky. So I simply sat in my porch chair, and accepted the eastward view that it presented. I immediately spotted the brilliance of Jupiter and Mars rising together above the horizon to my right. In the front of my view, the constellation Auriga had just come up, with Perseus above it. (I learned the constellations as a boy, so these are quite old friends by now.) I gently puffed my invisible cigar, and stared at Auriga. There was no breeze; the temp was in the mid 50s. I sat while the sky rotated about 15°.
Being able to see only about 1/8 of the full sky, I was gratified to have observed any meteor streaks. A few were obvious, while some were so faint and brief as to be almost speculative. I observed meteors at the carefully calculated rate of 8 per cigar.
A meteor is the final extinction event of something that once thought it was part of an enduring comet. Even the "intact" comet is noteworthy only because we can witness part of itself being cast away by the sun. I could imagine each meteor whispering, "Don't be smug, Bob!"
Bob
I'm just too old to throw a blanket on the damp grass, and gaze up at the full sky. So I simply sat in my porch chair, and accepted the eastward view that it presented. I immediately spotted the brilliance of Jupiter and Mars rising together above the horizon to my right. In the front of my view, the constellation Auriga had just come up, with Perseus above it. (I learned the constellations as a boy, so these are quite old friends by now.) I gently puffed my invisible cigar, and stared at Auriga. There was no breeze; the temp was in the mid 50s. I sat while the sky rotated about 15°.
Being able to see only about 1/8 of the full sky, I was gratified to have observed any meteor streaks. A few were obvious, while some were so faint and brief as to be almost speculative. I observed meteors at the carefully calculated rate of 8 per cigar.
A meteor is the final extinction event of something that once thought it was part of an enduring comet. Even the "intact" comet is noteworthy only because we can witness part of itself being cast away by the sun. I could imagine each meteor whispering, "Don't be smug, Bob!"
Bob
