A Great Shower Missed! The Weather is NOT Your Friend...

I know that the Perseids are an annual event and I can live with that. This means that should I live to be 98 and I am hale and hearty most of it, I have 75 shots to see it as an "adult" and several more as a child old enough to recall the magic and wonder of it.

And if you live in the right place, you'll likely see it every year.

Unless you are stymied by, of all things, the weather. This season has been exceptional in its ability to occlude more often than not a perfectly wonderful, clear sky. I've missed more full Moon views than not thanks to this delightfully cool, wet, overcast garbage and that I get 29 different times a year to see this! The crescent Moon has only been visible to me a couple of times since the spring. This month I managed one set of the Full Moon, and the days following - maybe three days - and since then, nothing. The Moon right now is just a blob of white light, not even defined enough to be round, through the thick haze. Once again, crushed by the weather.

Onr the exciting things about the Perseids is the startling visibility even in this area, where the biggest enemy after the weather is light pollution. (All our younger employees love our proximity to NYC but I wish they'd turn NYC off a couple nights a week or move it farther away.) In Montana, I wouldn't need to worry about ANYthing being diminished! The term "Big sky country" is accurate not only to the relative size of visible sky but to the clarity of it. No light pollution, not obstructions, not even heat haze (here in Joisey, heat haze is number 3 on the list. In the winter is when the best viewing happens).

All is not lost, however. Come October 21-22, the Orionid shower comes to town and I will be in Vermont, where once again, light pollution is not the enemy. Mid to late October that far north, neither is humidity. The only potential fly in the ointment is the dratted weather again, and by the gods, I'll make a deal with Gaea if I have to!

And if all else fails, I still have the belovèd Leonid showers on 18 November which occur at predawn on Wednesday. As I am up at 0415 fpr work normally, this I should see. Once in a while it has been overcast on this shower, but more often than not, the temperature of the ambient air completely stymied the viewing of it in open air for anything more than ten minutes at a time. November can be quite cold...

Still, it is better than nothing!

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