2015 Perseid meteor shower is going to be especially awesome

originally posted by: Krusty the Klown
From what I've read this seems to be a northern hemisphere phenonemon mainly.

Have any observers from the Southern Hemisphere seen anything decent?

As that's where I'm located, is it worth going outside these winter nights?

This has to do with the meteor shower's point of origin, which is in the Perseus constellation, which is in the Northern Hemisphere and appears very low on the horizon for the southerns observers. By all means, go out and try to spot some. It's just that the bulk of the "show" will be for the northern observers.

Typical bloody british weather gonna be cloudy all week .. Damn you!

Thank you for the heads up. I think I'll be requiring a nap today, so as to stay up all night...

Here is a map depicting viewing conditions across the United States.

image source. Accuweather

originally posted by: ThePeaceMaker
Typical bloody british weather gonna be cloudy all week .. Damn you!

I know, right? It's time to get affordable commercial spaceflight in order, so that we could get into an orbit and out of these damn clouds!

I was able to catch one

a reply to: hillbilly4rent

That is pretty darn cool!!

sweet! here on the oregon coast its looking good so far! i am getting some hot coco and a good blanket i hope a ufo don't block my view lol!

a reply to: Krusty the Klown

Apparently you may see some meteors but far fewer than up here in the north , viewing is reported as from 3:00am with best chance between 4:00am to 5:30am.

Unfortunately for those in the southern hemisphere, the event won’t be quite so spectacular, with experts predicting that only a third of the meteors will be visible to you this year. But don’t let that stop you! Ian Musgrave at Astroblog has some advice for Australian skywatchers to follow this week:

"People around the latitude of Darwin have the best chance of seeing meteors, possibly as many as one every 3 minutes at the peak. Next is places with the latitude of Cairns, then with the latitude of Mackay (like Port Headland and Mt Isa), and the places with the latitude of Alice Springs.
www.sciencealert.com...

In Southern Arizona, one used to just go outside the city limits to see a dazzling night sky. Now one has to drive a few more miles to escape the light pollution.. .but the Perseids are marvelous and worth the drive.

My brother happened to be on a nearby mountain top in the 1980's when a 'meteor storm' appeared during the Perseids... a 'storm' is a swarm of meteors from an especially dense debris field that creates hundreds of meteors in a short time frame... usually originating from a particular region in the sky.

His experience was awesome... he was looking up and the swarm erupted from a point almost directly overhead, making it look like the "warp drive" effect from sci-fi movies... like the Earth had gone into warp drive, heh, with stars whizzing past... apparently this lasted almost a whole minute.

a reply to: Baddogma

That's an experience worth writing home about. ... Does anyone have any updates of tonight's shower?

a reply to: Aleister

No update, really, but will report I saw some whoppers around 3 a.m. while lounging under the stars.

Funny how a sand size meteor is pretty.. .while a mountain sized rock would end everything human... like fireworks vs the hydrogen bomb, heh.