
are you sure that's .....
Tuttle and not Buttle !
Scientists are pulling their annual trick of promising a dazzling Perseid meteor shower, although seasoned Brit skygazers know only too well just thinking about the possibility of being treated to a spectacular lightshow is enough to provoke 10/10 cloud cover and torrential rain. The Perseids are set to peak on Thursday night …
the Perseids this year will be coupled with a pretty good planetary alignment.
Mars, Venus and Saturn are all within a gnats of the crescent moon, with Mercury not far below (but never more than 14' from the sun, so it will set long before the Perseids are visible)
there is a reasonable sky map at
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/05aug_perseids/
which links to a GIF with the planets added at
http://heliophysics.org/headlines/y2010/images/perseids/skymap_12aug10.gif
Well this...
"the possibility of being treated to a spectacular lightshow is enough to provoke 10/10 cloud cover and torrential rain."
...should solve the world's greatest moral crisis previously known as "global warming" but lately called "climate change"
...shouldn't it?
Err, the raincoat, thanks.
I gave up years ago watching astronomical events of any kind. Didn't get a decent solar eclipse, didn't see Hailey's comet, and only about once in life ever saw a meteorite burning up.
Only other thing i've seen are the odd satellite flying over and that was from a very rural part of the country.
In 2001 they were visible in clear skies in the desert in Aus from around 11pm to dawn and peaked at around one per minute. I wasn't aware until then that you could hear and see them explode. Words like spectacular and awesome should be reserved for such occasions. One of the best nights of my life.
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So the event is to the later end of this week?
I was reminded of the following lyrics:
At midnight on the twelfth of August, a huge mass of
luminous gas erupted from Mars
and sped towards Earth. Across two hundred million miles
of void, invisibly hurtling
...towards us, came the first of the missiles that were to
bring so much calamity to Earth.