Dear Lookout Observatory family,

Faithful wife Anitra and I were at Lookout Observatory for this year’s Perseid Meteor Shower. This was a good year because the moon was new and the skies were dark. On the night of August 12-13 together we saw about 30 over about 2 hours. About half were as bright as the brightest stars, and one was brighter than Venus. It was a good show!

I managed to photograph 4 over the space of about 1 and 1/2 hours near midnight, using a 14mm lens at f/2.8 and an ISO of 1600. Each exposure was 30 seconds, repeating continuously. The camera was aimed at the constellation Cassiopeia, and I have added green lines to show the “W” shape of the constellation, which is hard to make out in the middle of the Milky Way (the bright swath of stars running up and down). The bright oval patch toward the lower right corner is M31, the famous Andromeda Galaxy. Further toward the corner, just above the bottom of the photo is a small fuzzy patch. That is M33, the Triangulum Galaxy.These 3 galaxies  (Milky Way, M31, M33) are the largest of our “local group” of galaxies.

The meteors,of course, are the 4 streaks, all moving away from a point about 1/3 of the way from the left edge and just below the bottom of the picture. This is the “radiant,”  the point in the sky (in the constellation Perseus) from which all these meteors appear to come.

Were you up late on the night of the 12th? Did you see any “shooting stars”?

Keep looking up,

Carter, (sometime) Resident Astronomer,

Lookout Observatory