Perseid Meteor Shower

A poor glimpse of the nights sky during the perseids

The only meteor shower I ever viewed was the Leonids of 2001.  Truly one of the great meteor showers one will ever see in a life time, the Leonids of 2001 rained thousands of shooting stars an hour.  Last night's (or this morning's) Perseid Meteor Shower would provide us with roughly 60 to one hundred per hour.  Minuscule compared to the Leonids of 2001 but  nevertheless, it would be worthy of getting my sorry ass out of bed at 3am.

I ventured off to Burger Hill, after originally planning to go to Overlook.  At first I walked over to the school and viewed some shooting stars and was content with what I spotted.  But then I caught the less than quarter moon rising over the horizon.  So I decided to ride my bike up to Burger.  I was not the only meteor watcher.  There was a group making their way down and a guy who rode his motorcycle to the top.  But soon I had the place to myself.

Here I just chilled watching the shooting stars go by every so often.  Excluding the Leonids of 2001, I would spot more shooting stars tonight than I have ever seen.  I couldn't help but wonder what the ancient humans thought of this spectacle.  While there, I decided there were four different types of shooting star: (1) The shooting star that you catch just at the corner of your eye (for me, these are the ones I've seen most in non-major meteor showers) ; (2) The shooting stars that you catch for a quick split second that seem to be only a hundred feet away; (3) The shooting star you can see crystal clear for almost a second; and (4) the shooting star you see crystal clear that leaves a streak (this is the most sought after shooting star).