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Good post-Leonid morning!
Nov. 18th, 2001 08:34 amI went to sleep shortly after last night's post and woke up at around 11:30 pm, as Galina was getting in bed. As I started to putter about to set the alarm clock for around 3 am, Galina informed me that I was disturbing her in her falling-asleep state.
I've been there, too. It's that state where you are hurtling down, down through layers of consciousness towards Sleep, and where every little unexpected sensory input (e.g., sound) invades your being like someone trying to play a child's xylophone with a sledgehammer. Loudly (if that matters).
Anyway, I left for the spare bedroom
And found, after about 10 minutes, I could not fall asleep.
So I got dressed and went outside to join Drew, who was already star-gazing.
The night was clear, and the only disrupting influence was the light from the airport, which flashes alternately bright white and barely noticeable green to aid pilots in finding the place at night. That annoyance was taken care of by placing a tree trunk between the rotating light and my chair (and the tripod, as I had set up the Yashica with an f/2.8 wide-angle lens).
We definitely saw more shooting stars than on an ordinary night. Seeing as how my eyeballs only adequately cover a 60-degree segment of sky, I could not tell you accurately how many meteors per hour we saw, but it was generally not a problem to count to 10 or 12, approximating one-second intervals, between sightings inside that 60-degree cone.
Drew called it a night around 2 am or so, as there was cloud cover moving in. Fortunately, it wasn't solid cloud, and it left gaps here and there, through which you could see the show. I decided to tough it out. There were still plenty of streaks to find in the sky, you just had to keep shifting your gaze. From time to time, you'd also see a glow behind a cloud (looking like lighting), which told you that a piece of space debris had bit the dust behind that cloud.
Galina startled me around 2:30 or so (she couldn't sleep, so she pulled on some clothes and came outside), and we sat outside for a while enjoying the night, with me getting up every few minutes to redirect the camera toward a patch of sky that wasn't covered in cloud. After an hour or so, she called it a night, too, and I was again alone.
Around 3:30 or 3:45, I relocated to the veranda, as it seemed that we were going to be completely socked in with cloud, and the veranda was a comfortable spot from which to cover the one remaining patch of clear sky. I broke out the Kodak digital camera, too, just to see if I could "catch" a meteor with it.
Suddenly, around 4:00, I noticed that the tempo of the shower had increased sharply. I could barely count to 1 or 2 before the next meteor would appear, and that was just in the small segment of sky that I could see.
(It was about this time I noticed that the Yashica had run out of film, which was Mr. Murphy's contribution to the proceedings, but I digress... We'll see what turns up, at any rate.)
Suddenly, as if in answer to my wish, the clouds began to evaporate to the north and east, and I began to understand what is meant by a meteor "shower." (Heck, it may have been a "storm," but I'm neither picky nor qualified to tell the difference.)
How can I describe it? It seems too weak to call it a light show. Facing toward the northeast, I saw basically a continuous stream of streaking dots move from my upper right toward my lower left. Most dots simply moved a while and died; others left a luminescent trail that lived for several seconds longer than their authors.
Under normal conditions, I've generally found that shooting stars are something you see out of the corner of your eye at night. Not so here. Fixing your gaze on a chunk of celestial real estate was a guarantee of seeing dozens of meteors from the start to the end of their fiery career.
About the only thing missing was music.
By 4:20, I was both physically tired and emotionally satiated. If it weren't for the fact that we have a full day's work ahead of us in the shop, I'd have pushed my fatigue aside and stayed up until sunrise (the shower wasn't scheduled to peak until about a half-hour before dawn, at which point the light from a still-below-horizon Sol would start to wash out the show).
I got up about 40 minutes ago and immediately transferred the images from the Kodak to my desktop. None of the images (16-second exposure, f-stop adjustment ramped up to +2.0) show any meteors, though I did get some nice shots of the constellation Cassiopeia.
Time to go do the morning routine and get everyone else up. The store is a shambles, but we can - we must :^) - put it right.
Cheers...
I've been there, too. It's that state where you are hurtling down, down through layers of consciousness towards Sleep, and where every little unexpected sensory input (e.g., sound) invades your being like someone trying to play a child's xylophone with a sledgehammer. Loudly (if that matters).
Anyway, I left for the spare bedroom
And found, after about 10 minutes, I could not fall asleep.
So I got dressed and went outside to join Drew, who was already star-gazing.
The night was clear, and the only disrupting influence was the light from the airport, which flashes alternately bright white and barely noticeable green to aid pilots in finding the place at night. That annoyance was taken care of by placing a tree trunk between the rotating light and my chair (and the tripod, as I had set up the Yashica with an f/2.8 wide-angle lens).
We definitely saw more shooting stars than on an ordinary night. Seeing as how my eyeballs only adequately cover a 60-degree segment of sky, I could not tell you accurately how many meteors per hour we saw, but it was generally not a problem to count to 10 or 12, approximating one-second intervals, between sightings inside that 60-degree cone.
Drew called it a night around 2 am or so, as there was cloud cover moving in. Fortunately, it wasn't solid cloud, and it left gaps here and there, through which you could see the show. I decided to tough it out. There were still plenty of streaks to find in the sky, you just had to keep shifting your gaze. From time to time, you'd also see a glow behind a cloud (looking like lighting), which told you that a piece of space debris had bit the dust behind that cloud.
Galina startled me around 2:30 or so (she couldn't sleep, so she pulled on some clothes and came outside), and we sat outside for a while enjoying the night, with me getting up every few minutes to redirect the camera toward a patch of sky that wasn't covered in cloud. After an hour or so, she called it a night, too, and I was again alone.
Around 3:30 or 3:45, I relocated to the veranda, as it seemed that we were going to be completely socked in with cloud, and the veranda was a comfortable spot from which to cover the one remaining patch of clear sky. I broke out the Kodak digital camera, too, just to see if I could "catch" a meteor with it.
Suddenly, around 4:00, I noticed that the tempo of the shower had increased sharply. I could barely count to 1 or 2 before the next meteor would appear, and that was just in the small segment of sky that I could see.
(It was about this time I noticed that the Yashica had run out of film, which was Mr. Murphy's contribution to the proceedings, but I digress... We'll see what turns up, at any rate.)
Suddenly, as if in answer to my wish, the clouds began to evaporate to the north and east, and I began to understand what is meant by a meteor "shower." (Heck, it may have been a "storm," but I'm neither picky nor qualified to tell the difference.)
How can I describe it? It seems too weak to call it a light show. Facing toward the northeast, I saw basically a continuous stream of streaking dots move from my upper right toward my lower left. Most dots simply moved a while and died; others left a luminescent trail that lived for several seconds longer than their authors.
Under normal conditions, I've generally found that shooting stars are something you see out of the corner of your eye at night. Not so here. Fixing your gaze on a chunk of celestial real estate was a guarantee of seeing dozens of meteors from the start to the end of their fiery career.
About the only thing missing was music.
By 4:20, I was both physically tired and emotionally satiated. If it weren't for the fact that we have a full day's work ahead of us in the shop, I'd have pushed my fatigue aside and stayed up until sunrise (the shower wasn't scheduled to peak until about a half-hour before dawn, at which point the light from a still-below-horizon Sol would start to wash out the show).
I got up about 40 minutes ago and immediately transferred the images from the Kodak to my desktop. None of the images (16-second exposure, f-stop adjustment ramped up to +2.0) show any meteors, though I did get some nice shots of the constellation Cassiopeia.
Time to go do the morning routine and get everyone else up. The store is a shambles, but we can - we must :^) - put it right.
Cheers...
