Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight

[Darrell]

The Perseids peak tonight through Sunday morning before sunrise. If you have a clear sky tonight, go out and take a look! Perseus will be rising around 10:30 tonight from midnorthern latitudes; as a general thing at its best between midnight and dawn, when Earth's rotation is turning to face into the meteor stream. No optical aid is needed--it's best just to look naked eye. Lay a blanket on the ground or use a recliner, you might face northeast, but looking toward the zenith.

[randy]

For the radio geeks among us (from the TAPR SIG):

Saturday night, set your APRS radio to 147.585 and check your log the next
morning to see how many MS packets you got from other stations. You'll have
an order of magnitude more success if you do it on 50.62 MHz (AX.25 1200 baud packet FM) though there will be fewer stations, and so the performance will likely be about the
same.

beacon away at rates as high as one every 10 seconds

http://aprs.org/meteors.html

Make your packets as short as possible. The best format is simply to
include a grid square using the format >AA##aa Name. The ">" at the
beginning makes it so that APRS radios can receive and display them directly
The name is optional...

For best results, use a beam and point it at a distant population center
about 600 to 1200 miles away. That is your target area. Check your log the
next morning and see what you got.

Please set your PATH to direct, with no digipeters...

Good luck!
Bob, WB4APR

[308Mike]

MISSED IT!!! DAMN IT!! I shoulda' set a time with a sticky on the timer telling me the reason for the alarm!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, I so wanted to go outside and watch those streaks through the night sky!

Oh well, there'll be another opportunity for another comet tail that we'll pass through on our way around the sun.

[SoupOrMan]

We had cloud cover.

[Highspeed]

It was really disappointing here, the quarter moon doesn't help

[skb12172]

I missed the last two celestial events, due to clouds. I had a great view for this, though. It was a good show. I will note, in our video game/movie culture, people expect natural events like this to be like special effects. As a result, all of the kids and a fair number of adults were complaining about the shower being "boring." Sigh...I weep for our culture.

[Rich Jordan]

It was just too bright where we were (and we were too tired to go driving elsewhere). Our loss...