(meteorobs) Perseids, Campton New Hampshire USA

[Richard Kramer]

Given pessimistic cloud cover forecasts for the upcoming days, I 
hurried out to observe during one of the last expected clear nights 
on Friday. The encouraging reports which were being posted about 
pre-peak rates this year gave me some optimism.

With some friends, I hiked to the top of Dickey Mountain in New 
Hampshire to have a look at some pre-peak Perseids on Friday, Aug 
7/8. The Perseid rate was so low that I did not bother to log onto 
the clock for formal observing.

Informally, between 0200 UTC and 0500 UTC 8 August, we only saw 5 
Perseids. LM was around 5.7. The brightest Perseid was only magnitude 
2. We saw many more satellites, and more than twice as many sporadics 
as we did Perseids. A few of the sporadics were negative magnitude. 
We also saw two ISS passes. Clouds came in around 0500, so we dozed 
off. We were awakened a few hours later by a severely bright waning 
moon. The moon, combined with a high, thin haze washed out the sky, 
so we went back to sleep. Awoke again at dawn and picked wild 
mountaintop blueberries for breakfast before hiking out.