Do you go on late night or early morning adventure with your kids?
Dave and I and our son were out of the house at O four hundred dark this morning. We had an inflatable mattress strapped in the bed of Dave’s Ranger and were off to find a spot away from the lights of the city to watch the night sky for the peak night of the annual Perseid meteor shower.
Normally we wouldn’t have had to be up so early, but this year the peak of the Perseid meteor shower also happened to coincide with the full moon, so we had to wait until the moon was well down in the night sky in order for the streaking meteors to be visible overhead.
We were lucky to be helped by some heavy clouds in the west that covered the moon for brief periods.
In the little over an hour and a half after we parked in a pasture turn-off beside an open stretch of ranch land, we saw 17 meteors, 3 small satellites and the international space station fly by.
We were too busy watching for those blazing fast streaks of light to take pictures (the above photo is a stock photo) and the pictures that Dave took of the moon just before we headed home didn’t turn out but here are some links with some great photos and more information on the Perseid meteor shower.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/13/scitech/main20091995.shtml
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/meteors/3310516.html
This was one of those fun experiences that our family calls memory builders. Years from now, we may not remember exactly how many meteors or satellites we saw.
But we will remember staying up all night and heading out to watch for shooting stars.
4 Comments
Marie
January 10, 2017 7:37 amThanks for sharing with us at The Saturday Round Up. 🙂 My children are quite little, so we try very hard to have them indoors by dark. However, last week we had to go somewhere in the evening and took all of the children. It was so much fun to watch the little girls’ reaction to the stars and moon! We’ll do more as they get bigger.
Robin (rsIslandCrafts)
August 13, 2011 9:49 pmI love simple family times like those. I like to build those simple memories. They seem to last longer. Plus, it is a great time to talk.
We are very fortunate that even though we live in a populated “city” we are a couple miles away from the bright lights. My kids love to sit out and look at the stars with me. When the space shuttle was taking off we always went outside to see if we could see it. We could always hear the sonic boom though when it left the atmosphere.
Sandra :)
August 13, 2011 7:09 pmWhat a great way to spend a couple of hours with the whole family – I used to take the kids outside to watch look at the stars in the back yard or from a nearby soccer field (with binoculars) – I wish I’d thought to take them to something as cool as a meteor shower!
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