What to do on a Sunday Night

Well, as predicted, it was a nothing event this year. I got up at 2:30am and drove 20kms north, enough to get out of Canberra’s glow.

Although it was predicted Southern Hemisphere viewers would see an average of 9 per minute, I saw the grand total of TWO in half-an-hour, and one of those wasn’t a Perseides (wrong quadrant).

Maybe we’re too far south here, I won’t bother next year. The Leonides on the other hand… (November from memory?).

Just for interest’s sake: I went to a talk at the Astronomical Society of Victoria several years ago where a very interesting gentleman gave a lecture on predicting meteor showers. He had discovered a way of calculating the path of the debris output from comets and, by applying some fairly sophisticated maths, was able to predict whether the Earth would pass through a small cloud or a large cloud of debris, and so predict whether the shower would be fairly spectacular or not. Boffins the world over had recognised this Australian’s work. Makes ya proud (wipes tear from eye, sniff)!

I want to see meteor showers. Not all that excited about eclipses. Bloody US-centric NASA.

Thanks to whoever cleaned up my link mess 🙂 I’ll get it right one of these days…

Every year I try to see these fuckers, and every year I’m disappointed. Not this year – I’m too old.

DAMMIT IS IT SO HARD TO MAKE A LINK WORK? What am I, some sort of html-impaired idiot??

More exciting yet (for this space geek at least) is the total lunar eclipse of August 28th.

Starts at 6:51pm with totality between 7:52 and 9:22.

The Australian eastern states are going to have the best view in the world of this one, and we dont have another total lunar eclipse until 2011, so don’t miss it!

Better still, gather the angry mob, and assemble outside my house in the night, with pitchforks and burning torches. Shrilly mock Ralph the blasphemer, and demand that he be trialled!

I see that Dr Pachauri has also joined the list of blasphemers, given what he said yesterday is not dissimilar to my previously stated arguments.

But by golly gosh, it makes me damn thankful that we have an ATMOSPHERE that STOPS (mostly) this shit from hitting the earth.

Almost to the point of wanting to hunt down Ralph and give him a solid one on the jaw for wanting to continue to erode the fragile system that holds it all together.

Unfortunately the line’s too long.

Sounds like a complete waste of time, then, doesn’t it.

It might be better to get up real early on the Monday unless you wanna make a long, long night of it (the 9pm timing is for North American gazers). The Muesum of Victoria advises a later start for us:

“Meteors
The major meteor shower this month is the Perseids which peaks on the 13th. This is a strong Northern Hemisphere shower with around 100 meteors predicted per hour. It resides within the northern constellation of Perseus and is difficult to view from the Southern Hemisphere. However, at the peak of the shower, it has been known for long-pathed Perseids to be seen here. Perseids are fast, bright and frequently leave persistent trains. They appear to come from a point below the north-eastern horizon. The best time to look for Perseids is from 3am onwards. This shower is associated with Comet Swift-Tuttle, which passed near the Sun in 1991.”

and from another page on the NASA site:

“Perseus is easy to spot from Europe and North America, but it barely peeps above the horizon of, e.g., Australia and New Zealand. Southern hemisphere sky watchers will see very few Perseids.”

cheers…