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Re: (meteorobs) Perseids over Ohio - a Grim Fairy Tale

Gregg,

Thanks for sharing your Perseid experience with us. It may call it grim
but you did manage to see some activity so you did better than many
others who reported total cloud cover.

Keep up the good work!

Bob 


Gregg Pasterick wrote:
> 
> Sitting on the porch of a rented cabin with my wife, watching the dusk
> sky fill with clouds,
> some feathery and delicate, some swollen and ominous, I began to
> experience my annual
> Perseid Melancholia. Even the nocturnal chorus of katydids and
> crickets, their ageless
> primal song rising from the failing light, did little to brighten my
> mood. Where the peak of
> the Perseid meteor shower is concerned, I am batting 0 for the 90's, or
> nearly so.
> 
> We, my wife and I, have not seen many starry August nights since 1992.
> This last August
> of, not only the 90's, but the millennium, was distressingly consistent
> with it's
> predecessors. Did Nostradamus augur such late-millennium August skies?
> 
> We did manage to squeeze a couple hours of starry skies out of the
> morning of August 7
> before clouds and moonlight sent us to bed. The 16 Perseids we saw made
> for a nice
> appetizer, but I feared the main course would be another serving of
> clouds. It was time to
> shoot the waiter.
> 
> So it was with a palpable sense of the inevitable we blew out candles
> and climbed into
> bed Wednesday evening (the 11th), for a nap. I optimistically regarded
> the ghostly call of a
> nearby whippoorwill as a good omen.
> 
> The morning of August 12 was a struggle of opposing wills - mine
> against the clouds'.
> During the first hour, beginning at 4:35ut (12:35 local time), I was a
> Peeping Tom,
> pressing my nose against the window pane of each break in the clouds to
> open overhead. I
> was lucky to catch the 10 meteors I did. Only 2 of these were Perseids.
> Four were
> Aquarids, and 1 was a magnitude -2.0 Capricornid.
> 
> When the hour was up, I spent several minutes with my journal, waxing
> bitterly over yet
> another Perseid Debacle in the making.
> 
> My second hour of observing lasted only 40 minutes, from 6:05 to
> 6:45ut. It was more of
> the same: 13 meteors, 6 of which were Perseids, 2 of those glowing at
> magnitude -3.0.
> There was also a Kappa Cygnid in there.
> 
> The calls of distant Screech owls and Great-Horned owls did little to
> assuage my
> escalating depression.
> 
> The sandman, meanwhile, was beating me about the head and shoulders
> with such
> enthusiasm, he must have been nearly as exhausted as I.
> 
> During the next 40 minutes of observing, beginning at 6:50ut, I counted
> 15 meteors, 12 of
> which were Perseids. The highlight of this period was the Perseid which
> flared to a retina-
> damaging magnitude -6.0. Spectacular.
> 
> But the relentless cloud cover, coupled with my tussle with the
> sandman, was proving to
> be more than I could handle. I rolled onto my side, getting
> comfortable, allowing myself to
> fall into the warm maternal lap of slumber. And suddenly the clouds
> filled with light.
> Like a coffee stain soaking into a white shirt, a bright Perseid
> streaked through the clouds,
> flaring suddenly, its orange light spreading through the clouds.
> Certainly Dr. Frankenstein
> would have been plugging in his monster.
> 
> Suddenly rejuvenated, I found myself again attentively awaiting the
> next break in the
> clouds. And suddenly, unexpectedly and too-good-to-be-truedly, the sky
> cleared at 8:25ut
> and I was treated to another hour of dusty Milky Way, twinkling jewels
> arranged in
> constellations, and meteors. I counted 29 meteors, 26 of those
> Perseids. Two, one at
> magnitude -4.0, the other at -5.0, displayed bluish trains which
> persisted for about 5
> seconds each.
> 
> At the first hint of dawn I made a beeline for bed.
> 
> The next night, August 12/13, was but a temporary improvement.
> 
> My wife and I got comfortable beneath a clear sky bisected by that same
> dusty Milky Way,
> and began observing at 4:12ut (12:12 local time). We counted 46
> meteors: 38 Perseids, 1
> Kappa Cygnid, 4 Aquarids and 3 sporadics. It was out best hour of
> Perseids since George
> Bush was President.
> 
> During the second hour the sky dimmed from a starry limiting magnitude
> of +6.5 to a
> watered down +5.0. While the sky was dimming we counted 28 meteors, 24
> of which
> were Perseids. At the end of the hour, it seemed like a good time for a
> snack.
> 
> And that was that.
> 
> While we sipped hot coffee and snacked on donuts (I'll never be accused
> of being health-
> conscious!), Mother Nature was white-washing the starry dome. Only a
> handful of stars
> were visible by the time we finished our snack.
> 
> As if to remind me, just one last time, who was in charge here, Mother
> Nature woke me at
> 6am with a blast of thunder like the sound of Armageddon. I sat up with
> a start and,
> recalling that the top on the Jeep was down, I bolted as well as I
> could bolt in my semi-
> conscious state. Racing around the Jeep in my underwear and sleepy
> eyes, lightning
> exploding all about me, I was fairly certain I would be struck at any
> moment. But, dammit,
> the Jeep would be dry. I didn't much like the thought, I admit, of
> being found clinging to
> my vehicle in my underwear.......
> 
> And that, not so much in a nutshell as in a can of mixed nuts, is my
> 1999 Perseid meteor
> shower. Now I move on to harvesting herbs, tomatoes and sunflower
> seeds, counting
> migrating Monarchs, sowing prairie species seeds and roasting Chicory
> roots. And then
> there are the Leoinds........
> 
> ===
> Gregg.................
> Ring Leader of the Planet Ohio Nature Sites Web Ring
>     - http://pages.prodigy.com/daddy
> Gardens, Stars and Butterflies BB creator/moderator
>     - http://wwwdot delphi.com/daddysplanet
> Overseer of the Planet Ohio mail list for Ohio Nature Lovers
>     - http://www.egroups.com/list/ohio-nature
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