Star Light, Star Bright

Around 9:30 tonight, I was poking through Duran's blog, when I caught his post from a couple of days ago about the Perseids.

Man, I was kicking myself. With Paul so busy and my head not in the game, I'd totally forgotten about the Perseids. >_< But I knew the peak viewing time ran from Aug. 11-14, so there was still a good chance I'd see some strong activity if I got out of the city.

So Paul and I grabbed the telescope, threw our chairs-in-a-bag in the back of the Vue, and drove 45 minutes out of the county to Old Poplar. We went out there a couple of years ago to watch the Perseids, but I'd forgotten how amazing the night sky looks when you get away from the city lights.

We found Ursa Minor and a few planets. The Milky Way was fantastic (and very visible) ... and we each saw quite a few meteors shooting across the sky. In a word, the whole night was spectacular. We got back around 1:30 a.m.

One of my cousins, a teacher in California, takes some awesome astronomy photos ... but I couldn't track down his Web site. It's now 3 a.m. and I've stopped trying. ::grins:: The photo above -- which I really dig -- is from NASA's site.

For next year's Perseids -- and for the Mars shindig in October -- I think we're going to hook up our telescope's CCD eyepiece to the laptop and view it on-screen. Sure is easier than fighting over who gets to look next. ^_^

I gotta thank [vari] for reminding me about the Perseids, or I would've totally missed them. Did anyone else manage to catch the big show this year (or are you planning to hit the great outdoors for the last night of peak viewing)?