#Meteorwatch Has Begun
For the Next 36 hours the world will discover, observe, image and hopefully enjoy meteors, wonders of the night sky and the Perseid Meteor Shower on Twitter.
As well as looking up and enjoying the night sky, you can have some fun and contribute to science, by tweeting your meteor observations so they appear on a map, or by submitting a British Astronomical Association observing form for more detailed observations.
#Meteorwatch has started in the UK and will continue to run around the world closing back in the UK 36 hours later. Anyone can join in and enjoy the #Meteorwatch, no matter where you are or who you are.
@VirtualAstro, @Astronomy2009UK, @Britastro and many others will tweet, so join in, tweet, use the hashtag #Meteorwatch, post images and join in with science if you can and most of all have fun!
Major Update!
Meteorwatch.org was suspended by the company that hosted it due to heavy traffic on the 12th August, and they wanted lots of Money to continue hosting the site, as it became more and more popular. Unfortunately we couldn't pay the silly fees they wanted so we had no more site, a disaster!
Luckily for Meteorwatch, the Royal Astronomical Society and Redstation.com came to the rescue and have provided a server and hosting for this web site. The show can now go on!
Many, many, thanks to the Royal Astronomical Society and Redstation.com for their assistance.
If you see a meteor tweet it for a bit of fun and see it on the Meteor Map:
Tweet the hashtag #meteorwatch, your postcode, your country and, optionally, the meteor count – (you can use country codes such as UK or US).
Here are some examples of valid tweets:
- #meteorwatch E15 uk
- #meteorwatch SW5 0TR uk 1
- #meteorwatch 55210 us 4
- #meteorwatch 34013 ita 10
- #meteorwatch sydney australia 32
- #meteorwatch paris france
- #meteorwatch berkley CA
- #meteorwatch 3011 ch 8
The list of three letter country codes (ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes) can be found here
The Great Twitter Meteorwatch
Wednesday 11th to Saturday 14th of August 2010
From Wednesday 11th to Saturday 14th of August 2010 the Virtual Astronomer @VirtualAstro with the British Astronomical Association @britastro Beyond International Year of Astronomy and amateur astronomers, will be holding a Twitter Meteorwatch for the Perseid Meteor Shower.
Everyone is welcome to join in, whether they are an astronomer, have a slight interest in the night sky or just wonder?
As well as looking up, enjoying the night sky with us and seeing meteors, maybe for the first time? You will have the opportunity to contribute to Science if you wish, by tweeting and seeing your results on a map, or by submitting Observing Forms if you are a more serious observer.
This event follows on from the popular Twitter Meteorwatch held in August and December 2009 "Meteorwatch 2009"
Use the hash tag: #Meteorwatch and get involved, ask questions, do some science, follow the event and enjoy the wonders of the night sky with us. Images and other information will be tweeted as it happens. Live!
The highlight of the summer meteor showers: The Perseids, reach maximum around The 12th of August and may put on a display of aproximately 80 to 100 meteors per hour under ideal viewing conditions. Conditions this year are good due to there being no moon visible. Let’s hope the skies stay clear.
Perseid meteors are often bright with persistent trails which can linger for a while after the meteor has burned up. Further information on the Perseid meteor shower and how to view it, can be found in this site.
While you are looking for meteors, there will be other objects to look out for such as the Planet Jupiter, the Milky Way, Summer Triangle and manmade Satellites and more.
The Twitter Meteorwatch will start at 21.30 BST on the 11th of August and will continue through to the evening of the 14th of August. Amateur and professional astronomers from the US and other countries are invited to join in and take over from the UK, when the sun comes up here, helping make the event run continuously and be truly international. The event will close in the UK, in the early hours of the 15th of August 2010.
Posted in Astronomy, Facebook, Look Up, Meteors, Meteorwatch, Planets, Science, Solar System, Twitter | 
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Boost your Perseid Meteorwatch Experience
When @VirtualAstro asked me if I could share with you some impressions or tips and tricks about Meteor Shower observations, I did my homework and had a look at the previous blog entries. So I discovered that Astroguyz offered a concise, yet comprehensive overview of the most important tips to keep in mind when looking for meteors, complemented by Mark Zaugg’s post, while Deirdre Kellaghan shared with you the beauty of seeing such celestial show. So there I was in trouble, with both the technical and emotional parts already fully covered.
It is at this point when I decided to look at Meteor Showers from the most familiar point of view to me – outreach, the very core of #MeteorWatch, but taking into account a rather often situation: lay people whose selective memory only makes them recall that during a particular night – the peak – they can go out and see hundreds of shooting stars with their naked eye. As easy as that.
When I was back in Bucharest, at my astronomy club, this translated into visitors coming at the Astronomical Observatory, which is placed rather in the middle of the city, to see the shooting stars they had read about in the newspapers. With the light pollution around us and the limited time for visiting, you can imagine that most of them left the observatory rather disappointed and most certainly discouraged if this was the phenomenon astronomers proudly rated as top 3 next to eclipses and auroras, as Astroguyz correctly points out.
So I thought of a few ideas for observatories, planetariums, science centres etc. Ideas which I’m hopping will encourage you to share some of your Perseids outreach experiences with the public.
Close the observatory/planetarium and move to a dark area
You are not going to need instruments anyway so here’s your chance of not being dependent on a certain location. Plan to set up your observing station in a darker area, like a bigger park or somewhere at the outskirts of the city. Make sure you consult with public authorities and have their permission as well as security arranged.
Check your selected location during several nights and see if problems occur, like lighting from neighbouring areas. If it’s a park, arrange with local authorities to reduce the lighting during that night. If it’s an area next to the city, inform the locals in the area of the event, stressing the importance of dark skies and, better off, encourage them to join the event.
Invite people
Make an announcement inviting people to join you for a star party to hunt meteors together. Give precise details of location, directions and map how to get there, but also establish a meeting point from where to go together.
Include a list of things to have like warm clothes, sleeping bag and blankets, red light, recording devices (and obviously internet connection to join the global community at #MeteorWatch 
)
Open a single communication channel where people can register and keep in touch until the event and make sure you point this out in the announcement.
Send the announcement to the press, place it on your website, tweet it, put it on Facebook, make a poster, distribute flyers to visitors in the prior nights. Basically, use all available channels as best you can.
Apart from the general announcement, invite some key people to whom you would like to impress with your activities for future collaborations: journalists from newspapers or online portals, bloggers and, why not, even local authorities.
Create a community
Use a communication channel, whether it is your Twitter account, Facebook page, a discussion group, a forum etc. to bind these people into a community. After all, they will be sharing one amazing experience.
Invite people to subscribe there and encourage them to bring their families and friends or share cars with other participants if they have free places.
Get people ready by telling them more about meteor showers, presenting them how the observations should be done, sharing tips and tricks, do’s and don’ts. Develop resources like maps to download or direct them towards the MeteorWatch website. Explain them how they can actually make science if they submit their observation to #MeteorWatch with location details which you can provide.
Run the event
Meet your community, hope for good weather and go observe the shooting stars, enjoying this wonder of the night sky.
Go around the groups of people and make sure everything is alright, see how they are submitting information, explain more if the case, but be discrete. After all you want them to look up the sky.
Evaluate, reward and keep in touch
After a good day’s sleep, have a look and see the impact of your event: how many people attended, how many tweets were there, how the event was covered in the media before and after the event. Write down what went well and what went wrong and make sure you improve next year.
Spot the most active or enthusiastic participants and give them a free entrance to your observatory/planetarium. They might be one step away from becoming amateur astronomers.
Keep your community active. Thank people for joining, encourage them to share their impressions and to give you feedback. Continue sending them information to keep them interested.
Do it again next year. Bigger. Better.
Oana Sandu is working as Community and Outreach Support at ESO’s education and Public Outreach Department and she’s an amateur astronomer affiliated to Astroclub Bucharest.
Posted in Astronomy, Facebook, Guest Blogger, Look Up, Meteors, Meteorwatch, Science, Twitter, Whats Up |
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About the BAA Meteor Section
The BAA Meteor Section encourages amateurs to become involved in meteor astronomy through active observation, section meetings, and contributions to the section newsletter and other publications of the BAA.
Occasional reports are published in the Journal of the BAA. An account of the activity of the section each year can be found in the Report of the Meteor Section, part of the Association's Annual Report.
The aims of the BAA Meteor Section are:
Collection of visual, telescopic, photographic, video and radio observations of meteor activity on a routine basis, at all times of the year and not only when major shower activity is expected. The data add to a long-term archive of information covering activity, allowing long-term trends to be studied. Photographic and video observations yield valuable positional and orbital data. The Section also collects fireball reports for the British Fireball Survey (originally a joint exercise with the now defunct Artificial Satellite Section)
See also our extensive guide on How to Observe Meteors
Fun Facts About the Perseids!
The Perseid meteor shower is named for the constellation Perseus, from where the meteors appear to originate. The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most prolific showers of the year, with an average peak rate of 50- 80 streaks per hour, in darker skies. Meteors are the visible paths of vaporizing space debris as it encounters our planet’s atmosphere.
This debris, known as meteoroids, ranges in size from dust particles to small pebbles, and occasionally larger stones. As a meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it is heated by friction, which vaporizes the debris and causes the gases (both atmospheric and meteoritic) to glow. Most meteoroids disintegrate at about 30-60 miles above the surface, but become visible at about 40-75 miles.
Meteoroids orbit the Sun just like planets, comets, and asteroids. They travel at speeds of about 26 mps, but, when combined with Earth’s orbital speed of about 18 mps, enter our atmosphere at a velocity rate of about 44 mps. The meteoroids associated with the Perseid meteor shower enter the Earth’s atmosphere at about 37 mps. Our planet encounters space debris every day, thus meteors are actually visible all year long.
Occasionally, Earth passes through thicker patches of debris, known as streams or swarms, resulting in a meteor “shower.” Meteoroid streams, or swarms, have orbits similar to those of comets, thus are believed to be fields of comet debris resulting from a comet’s closing approach of the Sun.
The Perseid meteor shower has been associated with the ancient debris field of Comet 109/Swift-Tuttle. Comet Swift-Tuttle leaves new debris each time it passes our planet – every 130 years. This debris field has the appearance of several streams, each measuring millions of miles long.
The Swift-Tuttle debris streams are comprised of small widely-spaced particles. Most of the meteoroids are about the size of sand grains, but some may be as large as small pebbles. With a core diameter of about 26km, comet Swift-Tuttle is the largest known object, and one of the oldest comets, to regularly pass closely to our planet.
Comet Swift-Tuttle was originally recorded by Chinese astronomers in 69 BC and 188AD, but was formally discovered in 1862, by Lewis Swift on July 16, and by Horace Parnell Tuttle on July 19. Three others also independently discovered this comet: Dudley Observatory’s Thomas Simons; Antonio Pacinotti and Carlo Toussaint from Florence, Italy; and Danish Astronomer Hans Schjellerup. Comet Swift-Tuttle was “rediscovered” in 1992 by Tsuruhiko Kiuchi, ten years after its expected return of 1982.
That year, the comet reached 5th magnitude, making it easily visible through binoculars. Comet Swift-Tuttle will pass within 14-million-miles of our planet when it next returns in 2126. Scientists believe that the comet will be even brighter than the 1992 pass, and likely readily visible to even unaided eyes.
Astronomers once believed that comet Swift-Tuttle might, in the relatively near future, pass close enough to actually impact Earth or the Moon. While continued observations and recalculations have dispelled that concern for at least the next 2,000 years, this comet remains one of the greatest known solar system threats to our planet.
Source Material: NASA Worldbook JPL’s Solar System Dynamics Gary Kronk’s Cometography Astronomical Society of the Pacific Space.com Wikipedia
See more from Tavi at her site A Sky Full of Stars and follow her on Twitter @TaviGreiner
Posted in Astronomy, Comets, Guest Blogger, Look Up, Meteors, Meteorwatch, Science, Solar System, Twitter |
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Meteorwatch is Coming
There is nothing in this world that captures the imagination the same way as a meteor. It's an experience that is embedded in our very psyche. We all know to wish upon a falling star. Think of how often you see a painting of a star with a swooping tail – it's theme that is found in advertising, on video games, in movies, or anyplace you want to show the beauty of a star with the energy of motion.
Seeing the streak of a meteor rapidly flashing across the sky is not the same as what is usually displayed in popular culture. A meteor can be such a quick flash that you may not be sure you really saw it, or it can be a fireball that is unmistakable and beautiful. It is a sight that is best seen live.
I've looked forward to the 12th and 13th of August for years – the Perseid meteor shower peaks on those days. Being able to predict a high number of meteors over a short period of time gives us a big advantage of having a successful night observing meteors. My local weather tends to be nice with warm nights, and the shower is big enough you have extra chances in case one the first night is cloudy.
I want to make an invitation to everyone world wide to join me and thousands of others for Meteorwatch. The event will officially run from the 11th through the 14th of August. The objective of Meteorwatch is to give you the best chance possible to see a meteor in person. If your area is clouded over, we will share our photographs and observations from around the world.
Observing meteors is very simple to do – find the darkest place you can find and be prepared to look up for a while. No extra equipment is required, you don't have to leave the city – although it will certainly help if you can. If you are in a very dark area it is likely you'll see a meteor at least every half hour or so and much more if you're experienced or up later at night. If you've never seen a meteor before, we will share plenty of tips to help you discover one live. If you're an experienced observer, please share your experiences, observations and photos. You can begin as soon as it gets dark, but for best results you'll want to be out late – I've had best success between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning. With Meteorwatch being a world wide event, there will always be someone online to help out.
Best of all, Meteorwatch is a fun event where you'll find hundreds of people having a great time together in person and online.
Watch for more news on http://www.meteorwatch.org or follow http://twitter.com/VirtualAstro for more details.
Mark Zaugg is an amateur astronomer and enthusiast who has introduced dozens of people to the excitement of seeing a meteor in person. You can find him at http://twitter.com/Zarquil
Posted in Astronomy, Comets, Guest Blogger, Look Up, Meteors, Meteorwatch, Science, Solar System, Twitter |
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The interactive Twitter Meteor Map is Here
The interactive Twitter Meteor Map is Here.
Now you will be able to tweet if you have seen a meteor straight from twitter, On your computer or from your phone, just like you would for any normal tweet and see your observations appear on the "Meteor Map" in real time.
The meteor map couldn't be simpler to use: Just send a normal tweet with a little bit of information (More instructions at the bottom of the map page) and your results will appear on the map.
As well as looking up, enjoying the night sky with us and seeing meteors, maybe for the first time? We encourage everyone to send tweets telling us when they see meteors (shooting stars) and contribute to science and have some fun at the same time.
The results of the meteor map will be shared with organisations such as the British Astronomical Association and your results will contribute to serious science, so we can learn more about our solar system.
Posted in Astronomy, Look Up, Meteors, Meteorwatch, Science, Solar System, Twitter, Whats Up |
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Adventures in Meteor Spotting
Meteor observing is a favorite sport of ours. Unlike other astronomical endeavors, observing and recording meteor showers requires minimal gear; just a good pair of eyes and an intimate knowledge of the sky. And to cap it off, a true meteor storm can be an event of a lifetime… only a total solar eclipse or a good auroral display comes close in the sheer “wow” factor department. As the Perseid meteor shower draws toward its yearly maximum on August 12th, we at Astroguyz have been invited by the organizers of #Meteorwatch to present some tips and tricks of the meteor observing trade, as well as share some personal ramblings and trivia we’ve featured over the years as well as new insights sent in by our readers.
We have a special fondness for the Perseids, as observing them was a yearly family tradition growing up in northern Maine. Our backyard skies were pristine and dark, the kind that folks today might drive over 100 miles to camp under. The Perseids occurred until warm summer skies, and we would simply lay back on lawn chairs in sleeping bags as the sky wheeled slowly above us. The Perseids are sort of an “old-faithful” of meteor showers, as they perform reliably every year. Normal rates are about 60 per hour, although these have been greatly enhanced since the perihelion passage of the progenitor comet Swift-Tuttle in 1992. The 2009 Perseids approached levels of 200 per hour, and sported multiple successive peaks. Be wary of popular news outlets that will parrot “The meteor storm of a lifetime!” as this has joined the Mars email hoax in its yearly August run. The good news for the Perseids is that this year they’re nearly exactly timed with the New Moon, which occurs on August 10th. The darker the skies that you can position yourself under, the more meteors you’ll see.
But first, some meteor observing lingo. The gold standard for determining the intensity of a meteor shower is termed the Zenithal Hourly Rate. The ZHR is an ideal number, the number of meteors you’ll see under absolutely dark skies if the radiant of the shower is directly over your viewing location and you have complete 360° all-sky coverage. This, of course, never happens in reality. Ways to maximize this number in actuality include using multiple observers to view in different directions (three is optimal) and choosing a good dark sky site. If the Moon is above the horizon, try and place it behind a building or object and view in the opposite direction.
Meteors will also occasionally approach from other directions, known as sporadics. The rates for these can vary throughout the year and tend to hover between 1-5 per hour. Some sporadics may be related to other showers, while a handful come in from the apex, antihelion (anti-sunward) and toroidal points on the celestial sphere. For example, fainter showers such as the Kappa Cygnids, Delta Aquarids, and the Alpha Capricornids may all be sighted during the Perseids. Make a careful note of the direction of travel to discern any stragglers.
Speaking of which, meteor observing is one of the last fields of endeavor that a naked eye observer can contribute useful scientific information to. Simply note your location, period of observing time, and how many meteors you spotted. Other useful bits of data include the limiting magnitude from your viewing sight (the Bortle Scale is a good way to quantify this) and method used. Some observers note the magnitude of each meteor observed and its direction of travel, their thoughts and feelings, etc… but I find a simple “where/how many/how long” method is best. Remember, you want to keep those dark adapted eyes on the sky, not entering notes. The best method is to simply record your observing session for later analysis; I’ve used a small digital recorder for this task to great effect. Smaller than a cell phone, it can record spoken impressions for hours. Just remember to mark your start time when recording. Another helpful tool to plan your observing sessions is the program Meteoracle. This runs on your desktop/laptop and forecasts what you might see based on your input location. Keep in mind, however, that this is not a live forecast, merely a projection. I’d like to see them take the next step and incorporate weather conditions and current reports of meteor activity into the mix to see how the forecast is evolving from day to day.
Organizations such as the International Meteor Observers group take and compile reports from observers around the globe. If you are lucky, you just might be the only observer reporting from your wind-swept longitude in the Arctic Tundra or the Gobi desert and manage to provide that crucial piece of data. We were lucky in this aspect to catch the Leonid meteor storm in 1998 from the deserts of Kuwait while deployed with the USAF. That particular year, most northern hemisphere longitudes were either clouded out or missed the peak as it occurred during broad daylight. Storm levels approached a ZHR of +1,000, with a bright fireball every several seconds.
The Leonids are the most infamous of all showers, with ZHR peaks approaching 10,000 every 33 years. In 1966, observers reported a distinct sense of the Earth’s forward movement through space, much like the old Star Trek “warp-drive” effect. In 1833, this same shower awoke startled villagers on the US Eastern Seaboard, convinced the apocalypse was nigh! Needless to say, the Leonids are always worth keeping an eye on every year around November 17th, and will start to gear up again in 2030.
Other showers known for this outburst style of activity include the Giacobinids, also known as the Draconids (October 8th-10th), the Ursids (December 22nd/23rd), and the Bootids (June 26th to July 2nd). Other ‘old faithful’ style annual showers include the Quadrantids (named after an obsolete constellation, Quadrans Muralis, or the mural quadrant), the Lyrids, and the Geminds. The Geminds are also unique in that their progenitor body is asteroid 3200Phaethon. This is thought to be perhaps an inactive comet nucleus. One shower, dubbed the daytime Arietids, was only discovered with the advent of radio astronomy, and would be well known if only it didn’t occur in the broad daylight. The aforementioned Giacobinids are also unique in that their radiant is high in the sky for northern hemisphere observers, and actually peaks before midnite. This usefully lackluster shower also bares careful scrutiny as it has been known to outburst on occasion, most notably on the years 1933, 1946 and 1998. There is some stir in the meteor observing community of a possible outburst in 2010 or 2011…
Some mysteries still abound surrounding all things meteor and meteorite related… for example, a hot debate exists concerning the appearance of “corkscrew” meteors. Such apparitions defy the laws of physics, and yet even seasoned observers report them. Either there is something about meteor trajectories that we do not understand, or a very clever optical illusion is occurring.
Another phenomenon that has considerable precedent is audible meteors. I once witnessed this bizarre trait during a particularly bright Perseid; it actually produced an audible hiss! This phenomenon has been dismissed as an illusion until the last few decades. Recent research has lent some credence to idea that under the right conditions, a bolide may produce very low frequency radio emissions and cause localized electrophonic sound to reflect off of wires, flag poles, or even fields of grass or trees. Popping or crackling may also occur. Particularly interesting is the fact that these sounds occur nearly simultaneously with the sighting, and thus cannot be related to sound waves traveling from the meteor. And of course, it is not completely understood why an inordinate number of meteor shower radiants occur in the northern celestial hemisphere!
Still want more? Conducting photography during a meteor shower is simple; simply aim your tripod mounted DSLR camera at or near the radiant, focus, lock the shutter open, and let the meteors “burn in” as they pass overhead. Some astronomers have built 360° degree all-sky cams which record the sky continuously, equipped with the same technology as low light surveillance cameras. Some observers even monitor meteor showers in the radio end of the spectrum. This can even be done with a simple FM radio; set it to an unused frequency, and you may hear a distant station fade in and out as the signal is briefly reflected off of the hot ionized trail left by a meteor.
Finally, a fascinating method of collecting micro-meteoroids has come to our attention. Some enterprising folks have managed to collect tiny specimens via magnets and rain gutters…the thinking goes that tiny ablated spherules stay suspended in the atmosphere and make their way down as cosmogenous material during rain showers. The trick is to have a huge collection area and a powerful magnet. Other metallic particles from volcanic ash or terrestrial pollution may be present, but micrometeorites reveal themselves as tiny black spheroids under a microscope. I was highly skeptical of this when I first heard it, but now have a set of rare earth magnets enroute to Astroguyz HQ to test this theory out… and here we thought we’d heard of everything…
I hope this short smorgasbord of all things meteor-related has served to whet your appetite for more. Meteor shower observing is one of the simplest yet most rewarding endeavors you can pursue in astronomy, and it always seems to have the biggest wow factor with the general public. Have fun, and clear skies!
Posted in Astronomy, Comets, Guest Blogger, Meteors, Meteorwatch, Science, Solar System |
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Get Comfy the Perseids are Coming
About 24 years ago we had a holiday in a remote location in the west of Ireland. The house was high on a grassy ridge on Bolus Head looking over St Finian’s Bay in Co Kerry. From this vantage point the 350 million year old Skellig Rocks rose like stegosaurus plates from the Atlantic Ocean. They were 16 kilometres out to sea but their jagged presence dominated the view to the South. It was early August and when darkness fell the predicable blinking of a distant lighthouse was the only manmade object discernable at sea level in the blackness.
One moonless evening, the sky was crystal clear, the summer triangle was dramatically intersected by our galaxies river of stars, so much more touchable than the suburban view. I lay on the sun -dried grass looking for Perseids, one, two, three, four, five, six, plus several in the corner of my eye within a few minutes.
Time to take action, I went into the house and dragged out several mattresses, and encouraged (made) my family and our guests come outside, lie down and look up. I have a vague memory of sofa cushions being shoved through windows at one point to help the nest building.
As usual they thought I was mad, but soon they were seeing one of the year’s wonders in perhaps the darkest place on our island. We watched for satellites and my mattress guests (two families, four adults, four children) had never seen them either, so in between meteors we looked at these metal objects orbiting about 200 miles up.
A perfect viewing spot, we watched on a slight incline toward Perseus in North East, but the meteors came from what seemed like every direction. We watched many many meteors sizzling into our atmosphere in dots and dashes with long gaps and differing lengths. The Perseids are the result of tiny cast – off particles from Comet Swift Tuttle, shed as it passed through our solar system on its 130 year orbit of our sun. Once a year the Earth’s journey round our sun brings our atmosphere and these remnants into contact with each other .These particles hit the atmosphere at huge speeds and burn up thereby offering the observer natural fireworks. Ancient elements revealed by their colours as they vaporise in front of our eyes.
I will never forget the perfection of the viewing, the WOW’s, the laughter, the joy of my family seeing this shower for the first time ever.
Over the years since I have watched the Perseids from a deck chair in my garden, some escape the eye under hazy lights in suburbia. It is always the most exciting shower of the year and rarely disappoints. If you are lucky to have clear skies between mid July and mid August, no equipment is needed, just you and your eyeballs. If you want to fill out an observing sheet to record, the colour, length, duration, direction, location, hourly rate of your Perseids then they are easy to find and fill.
You may follow Deirdre on Twitter @skysketcher
Skellig Rock by Bernard Kelleghan
How to see the Comet (C/2009 R1 McNaught)
This is a very quick blog post to help people track down Comet C/2009 R1 McNaught.
The comet is a very difficult naked eye object but is easily seen in binoculars or small telescope. It looks like a very fuzzy star with a green halo, stretching into a very long and tenuous (very faint) tail.
You will need to look North around midnight and the comet is very low and near the horizon. You may need to move to where you can get a fairly clear view of the Northern horizon.
Before you go out to hunt for the comet, go to:
http://www.heavens-above.com/comet.aspx?cid=C%2F2009%20R1&lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=CET and look at the charts. These charts show a wide and close up indication of where the comet is. The wider view chart is the most important as it shows the constellations (shapes the stars make).
Print the wide view chart off if you can, or memorize roughly where the comet is on the chart. Go outside, look north, find Cassiopeia (w shaped constellation) and Perseus below and to the left of Cassiopeia. Perseus is quite close to the horizon. Once you have found these constellations, use the chart to get a rough idea of where the comet is. Using your binoculars, or a telescope if you have one scan the rough area of the Comet according to the chart.
You should within a short time find the comet. Beware! it will probably look very star like (fuzzy star) to start with, but once you have found it you should start to see a very faint tail and the greenish halo around the nucleus.
Hope you find it and enjoy 
