2010 Perseids Star Party

After several years of making an effort, our familiy was finally able to make a real star party out of the August 12th meteor shower this year!  We have been enjoying "star parties" for many years, though we didn't know that's what they were called.  Year after year we have tried to get a good experience of the Perseids, but often only made a stab at it...we'd go to bed, but set the alarm for 2 or 3 a.m.  Then we'd get everyone up, wander outside to the drive way, and watch a little while.  When the children were younger, the big draw for them was not the meteors or the stars, but the hot cocoa or coffee that they were allowed to sip!

Last Christmas, though, we really started making better preparations for star gazing by purchasing a pair of good binoculars.  Parents, don't miss the opportunity of experiencing the declaration of the glory of God in the heavens just because you don't have a telescope.  Binoculars will do just fine to start with.  My son had also bought me a laser pointer for my birthday a few years ago:  honestly, we've had more fun with this silly thing.  The entire family was here at my house for my daughter's wedding, and when I got out the laser pointer to show them a few constellations, they couldn't resist beginning to experiment with all that it could do.  I think they spent a couple of hours shining it in different places, and then they brought it inside and started seeing what it would do under various conditions.  Well, at least it survived.
Here are the binoculars we bought ourselves for Christmas:

Orion Binoculars

And here is the laser pointer we've had so much fun with:

Green Laser Pointer

Finally, we borrowed some camping cots from my dad.  Before it got dark, we set out the camping cots in the lot in front of our house.  We live in a roomy suburban subdivision, and the only light pollution problem is the security light on our property.  That IS a problem, but it doesn’t keep us from having a good view of the sky, and if we’re careful, the light doesn’t spoil the view too much.
During the afternoon we discovered a tip concerning listening to the meteors, so we also got out the stereo system, set it up on the ironing board, and tried to tune it so that we could hear the pings made by the meteors as they entered the atmosphere.
Here is the link that gave us the tip:

See and Hear Meteors

Unfortunately, it didn’t work for us this time.  Next time I’ll do a little more research and see if I can pinpoint it.  As a musician, I’m interested in all kinds of sounds, and it’s just fascinating to me that one can hear the “music” of the meteors!
It rained that afternoon, and in 101 degree heat, rain is not a blessing.  It was miserably hot and muggy out even around 9 o’clock when it got dark.  And so we decided to watch a movie and come back out later.  As a result, we missed the best meteor of the evening!  Apparently a large “grazer” meteor hit the atmosphere right around 10:00 CDST…and we were watching CARS.  Go figure.  We heard from several people, local and otherwise, that it was spectacular and some of them even heard a “swoosh” with it.  Interesting, because meteors hardly ever make noise we can hear.

Here’s a time-lapse video of some of the meteors:






Around 11:30 we ventured out doors to discover that the temperature had dropped significantly, leaving everything wet with dew, and even covering us with dew as we walked out of the house.  The night was continually damp, but at least it cooled off!  After wiping some of the water off the stereo, we settled down in our camping cots to watch the show.  I’m pretty sure we saw over 100 meteors, though we didn’t count.  Rosie and I stuck it out until 5:45 that morning, though I took a nap somewhere around 1:30 for about an hour and a half.
While watching for meteors, we of course had to look for constellations and sky objects.  We picked out the following constellations:

Sagittarius, Cygnus, Aquila, Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, Andromeda,

…and several others.  Another exciting thing was that I saw a deep-sky object I hadn’t viewed before.  I believe it was this one:

Galaxy M31

Once I picked it out with the binoculars, I was also able to spot it with the naked eye.  I think we picked out a few other deep-sky objects, ones we had seen before, but I have slept since then, and I wasn’t in particularly good mental shape after staying up all night, so I’ve forgotten which ones we looked at.
Here is a picture of the sky chart for that night at about 2 a.m.  We were oriented facing east and very slightly south.

You can get a sky chart like this for your area just by visiting:  Heavens-above.  Sign up for a free account and give them your zipcode.  Then you can sign in any time, and it will give you the whole sky chart for your area at the time you sign in (you have to find the "whole sky chart" in the list of things on the page...it's down nearer the bottom).

The next good meteor shower will be the Leonids, November 17th.  There is a meteor shower in October, but it will be blanked out by the full moon.  If you observe during the very early morning hours (after 3 a.m.) on November 17th, you'll probably catch a few.

But whether or not you view a meteor shower, do get out in the dark with your children and some binoculars.  Even if you don't know what you're looking at, you'll see some amazing sights.  The weather should begin cooling off in a few weeks, and as the fall approaches the constellations and sky objects will become clearer as the summer haze settles.  The moon is fabulous through binoculars, by the way.  It will be a great family time.  I promise you will end up with some deep discussion about life, the universe and everything when you and your children behold the glory of God in the heavens!