Observing Reports
August 2009
12th August 2009
12/08/2009 - Perseid Meteor Shower
I haven’t been out under the skies in well over a year mainly due to other commitments and recently had the urge to get back into Astronomy. Unfortunately my laptop computer broke down on me and it was the only system I could get all my Astrophotography applications and cables to work correctly…..new battery on its, way so fingers crossed!
There has been a lot of press lately about the Perseid Meteor Shower so I thought what better way to get back in to viewing the nights sky than to take in my first meteor shower.
Opened up The Birch Tree Observatory at around 9:50pm and noticed a slight whisp of clouds blowing over to the North East with a blue nautical twighlight sky dotted with a few of the brighter stars (Vega, Cappella & Deneb). Through out the whole observation period the sky was never fully dark and being at 56 degrees north can have its drawbacks, but towards the end on the month this will change.
I started to align my 8” Newtonian and started with Vega as the first alignment star. Suddenly a meteor shot through the field of view all the way from Vega North to Cappella and left the most amazing smoking trail behind it, lasting for ages. I ran into the house and got my Canon 350D and took the below image of the smoke trail. This one must have been very close! Not sure if it could have been a Perseid as it shot towards the North and didn’t radiate from Perseus, but was quite a shock to see such a bright meteor and such a long smoking trail.
The alignment of the scope just wasn’t working tonight and it didn’t help that I don’t wear a watch so hadn’t a clue the correct time. Instead I decided to just point the scope to various deep sky objects and first to view was M29 in Cygnus. I always like to view this star cluster, its easy to find and has a nice basic looking square shape formed out of around 6 bright stars. Didn’t spend long on it and moved to M13 The Great Globular Cluster.
M13 is another easy to find object and I have viewed this on many occasions before. It still surprises me at how closely grouped the stars are and at how many there is. It was a great view and using various magnifications worked very well to resolve a lot of detail within the cluster.
I left the tracking on M13 while I viewed the meteor shower for a while and saw a few more shooting stars, some quite faint but very exciting to watch. Even heard a few neighbours saying “I just saw another one!” so its good to hear people were out experiencing the nights sky.
I noticed the moon was beginning to rise giving off a burnt yellow colour as it was very low to the horizon. This didn’t affect the viewing of the meteor shower as a lot of the shooting stars were very bright.
Jupiter was now high enough just to be seen over the wall of my observatory, but still too low for adequate viewing. I could make out two bands on the globe and noticed that “Io” was very close by. Shame I couldn’t see more detail as two of Jupiter’s moons were crossing in front.
It’ll be a good view of Jupiter in a few years time, when it’s high enough that the haze and atmosphere doesn’t affect the view so much.
Had work the next day so thought it best to close the observatory and head in.
A quick look around resulted in approximately 20min extra naked eye viewing time before going in. Sitting on a chair under our Birch Tree and looking towards Cassiopeia the sky was a lot darker now and a slight dim view of the Milky Way was apparent. A very bright meteor shot over Ursa Major then 20 seconds later another close to the same area and moving to the south. This was followed by quite a few more shooting stars and it really ended the night on a high.
It was really great to get out again and was please I spent the time to appreciate this hobby again.