Magic

Agent 99 8/11/2007, 4:53 am

Hey I'm sure you already knew this but the Perseid Meteor Shower peaks tomorrow night. I had forgotten all about them untill we were sitting by some friends of ours pool last night. I just happend to be looking in the right place when I saw one streak across the sky. We ended up laying down a blanket by our pool when we got home and must have seen about 30 in a two hour period! Perfect night to see them too!

cravnravn 8/11/2007, 5:58 am

SHIT!!!!!!!!! we are getting screwed!

The time of the closest approach should be 4:50 p.m. ET (20:50 GMT) on Aug. 11 and could last about 40 minutes, favoring observers in Eastern Europe, eastern North Africa eastward to central Russia, India, and western China. Unfortunately, if a sudden bevy of Perseids materializes, North Americans would miss out, since it happen during local afternoon hours. "I would expect a short peak of a few hundred meteors per hour, though they should be mostly faint," said Lyytinen

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/040806_perseid_guide.html

Hey Magic, in that link, the far right side of the page, take a look at that telescope and tell me what you think, I have an Orion now and Im looking to upgrade.

Agent 99 8/11/2007, 3:12 pm

Yeah it sucks we don't get to see the real show!!

We did see some pretty good sized ones streak across the sky. They left some pretty good tails behind them too.

cravnravn 8/11/2007, 4:51 pm

Thats OK, I'll just put this in Chapter 29 of 101 reasons why Cravnravn pops a beer..2 sets of neighbors will be arriving shortly, and thanks to the Man Up Above, theres no humidity clear ski's and temps in the 60's. So we are setting up the fire pit and benches to the NE. Shooting star or No shooting star, Ill be indulging in an adult beverage booya

Magic 8/11/2007, 11:46 pm

Yeah I was going to mention that as I always do and last night I saw a few but was waiting for tonight and sunday night which should be the best.........unless you have a cloudy damn sky like I do right now

I probably won't see anything tonight and won't know about tomorrow until it happens......since this is Washington

I had plans this time to lay out on this inflated matress the wife bought in the back of my 4X4 out in the middle of the front yard (which I spent all day mowing and sweeping today)

I sure hope I get some clear sky........this is my time of year since those good one in te winter are getting too cold for me and I am tempted to build a glass box with heat to put in the back of the truck for that........or a glass roof on the house!

Looks like lots of good scopes there Cravn........depends on how much you want to spend.

http://www.telescope.com/jump.jsp?itemID=1&itemType=HOME_PAGE

The main reason this would be a good weekend is the moon isn't out messing up the view........instead I get clouds.

Well I hope you guys get a clear sky

cravnravn 8/12/2007, 4:29 am

It was good not a cloud in the sky, it was cool temperature wise, we seen 1 shooting star that was HUGE, it had dust tail very long, got to see a satellite too. This blast of fall air has got me in the mood for some football.

Agent 99 8/12/2007, 6:34 am

Well it was another clear night for us here in Indiana. My youngest is hooked! I could set outside all night and show her the sky. She even picked out a couple of satellites trecking across the sky. She was sooo sure she was watching the Shuttle crossing the sky. Not sure where to find it up there.

Cravn..... here is what I have here at the house.

http://www.telescope.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=276943&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=3&iSubCat=369&iProductID=276943

This is the beginner size for the Dob's. I bought it several years back for my girls. It's a good scope, but it's bulky and hard to move around to search the skys. I do see that it has a Computerized Object Locator on it now. This would make it much easier to find what your looking for! I don't have the luxury of having that on mine. They must have added that feature after I purchased ours. When Mars was at it's closet approach to Earth a couple of years ago. I was able to see the polar ice caps on the planet! With the right eyepieces you could see the rings of Saturn also. In all I'm happy with the scope, but I'm thinking I'm going to upgrade someday soon.

Guest 8/12/2007, 7:30 am

My star watching is pretty much limited to weekends in the late summer, fall, and winter. Although I do get to every so often thru the week... usually on Mondays or Thursdays. Only get to do it in person at this little place called the RCA Dome... about 10 times a year... a few more than that these past few years!

Oh, I forgot... I did do some MAJOR star watching early this year in south Florida.

Yes, I'm ready for some football. HS on Fri nites and the big boys on Sundays...

Administrator 8/12/2007, 8:50 am

The show last year was amazing. I think I mentioned the meteor I saw break up in the atmosphere.....that was incredible. At first it looked like a bright shining star. It wasn't moving and was at least twice the size of the brightest star in our sky......is that Venus? Saturn? In any event, that star turned out to be a meteor because it suddenly shot across the sky and broke into pieces. Awesome.

Magic 8/12/2007, 10:56 pm

HEY!!

The sky cleared so outside I go to watch the meteors.......just saw a nice one when I went out on the porch to look!

Magic 8/14/2007, 3:21 am

Well I saw quite a few last night and one bright flash that was so good it was like staring at the sun for a second!

I just went out for a few on 3am property patrol and the sky is better tonight and the sky is full of stars and a few satellites went by but it was a bit too cold.......and I guess I was too lazy to dress up and haul my chair out in the lower part of the front yard to get a nice view......since there still are a few meteors out there.

Btw I forgot to mention this website you should check out.

It is for people who want to do "galaxy analysis" by looking at the trillions of pictures taken by the Hubble and a couple other space telescopes to be analyzed to put them in proper category and get rid of the fuzzy pics (a computer can't do this as good as us humans )

99.......maybe you should show your daughter and let her check it out (if I had a daughter that was into this stuff she could be sort of happy since she would have to be home schooled and I would tell her all the real boys were out in space some where

Of course I am in the top 25 of the "Galaxy Analysis" group

There are people around the earth doing this (last I heard about 100,000)

If you have any questions about how this works just ask........it works best on the faster isp's.

http://www.galaxyzoo.org/Default.aspx

Guest 8/14/2007, 4:27 am

Pretty cool stuff there, Magic.
Go to the forum and look at the topics with the poster's favorite pictures of edges, spirals, etc. Awesome!

Thanks for the link, Mr. Magical Asteroid Watcher!

Magic 8/14/2007, 4:51 pm

ColtsKurt wrote:Pretty cool stuff there, Magic.
Go to the forum and look at the topics with the poster's favorite pictures of edges, spirals, etc. Awesome!

Thanks for the link, Mr. Magical Asteroid Watcher!

Yeah the Forum there has so many pages and threads running I rarely look at them and of course the best pics there are the ones I post

My ID on the Forum part is "MÅGIC" (of course)

And as far as analyzing galaxies my ID is "Magic"

It looks like you have to sign in to be a member to see the actual stats on the "Galaxy Analysis" page on the site though......but you can figure that part out.

My pics are on the Forum board called "Stunning sights!" each night (early in the morning your time)

Just go to that page and look for my name .....sometimes you will have to scroll back a page or two......and all the pics I saved are on that board.

They only list the top 25 members stats and I am about #20 right now with over 30,000 galaxies analyzed.

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