(meteorobs) Numerous and bright : Perseid 2008 !

[Bob Longmire]

Hello all, we were observing from about 50 miles north of Milwaukee WI
in USA, on Monday night Aug 11 into the morning of the 12th. This is 6
hours behind UT/GMT - we are amateurs so we didn't track in any
official way but we saw about 80 events between about 11pm and 2am
local time.  I understood the activity was predicted to continue
increasing until dawn but we got tired and a bit cold out there.  Only
60F but we were underdressed.

The night was 85% clear with only a few wispy clouds blowing over from
the west.  We were looking out over Lake Michigan, about 100 miles of
water to our east, with the moon well behind us and covered by trees
so it was plenty dark.  The normal lake mist broke up about 12:30 and
we could see stars almost down to the horizon.

We probably saw about 20 meteors with definite trails and almost 60 as
just points of light streaking across.  Maybe 8 or 10 of the trails
had some kind of color in them from different elements, copper or
nickel or iron, the rest were just white.  And there were three really
different ones, I want to call them fireballs, noticeably bigger than
even the trailing ones and they broke up as they streaked through. 
There was one at just about 2am that was the largest I've seen in a
few years of going out for this.

The apparent radiant seemed to be all over the place.  That one big
one at 2am was actually going toward Perseus and was definitely slower
than the others, so it may not have been part of the same group of
rocks as the others we saw.  That was the most strange part of it,
that some of these meteors seemed to be coming from different
directions, not zooming out from a central point like snowflakes do
when you see them through the windshield.

I know this is anecdotal and not well measured but those were our
impressions.  Along with the impression of how majestic the universe
really is.  If you watch constellations revolving around Polaris for
even a few hours you can almost feel the earth rotating.  And if you
see these pebbles streaking into the atmosphere you can sense the
speed of our path around the sun.  Plus we had a good view of the
Milky Way and there was a strong feeling of being connected by gravity
to the center of the galaxy.  Speeding around the universe on a big
rock and we were sitting right on top of it.  

Fun stuff.

Bob Longmire
Chicago