In Praise Of Dark Night Skies

This week we went out on the deck one night, leaned back in our chairs and watched the sky for Perseid meteors. These happen when the Earth  moves through debris remnants of the Swift-Tuttle comet, something it's been doing for at least a couple of thousand years.

The comet loops around the sun every 133 years. The comet is about 15 miles in diameter. When the comet gets near the sun, the sun's heat loosens the ice that holds the comet together, and bits and pieces are released into space. When the Earth moves through that region of space, some of those little chunks are on a collision course with the Earth, and they fly into our atmosphere. Others might possibly miss us but are pulled in by our gravity.

The comet is moving at something like 130,000 miles per hour. When those high-speed bits of comet debris hit our upper atmosphere, the friction of such speed burns them up, making a bright flare with a trail of bright, twinkling dust.

In the image above, if you look closely you can see the Milky Way in the center. (That's our galaxy with hundreds of millions of stars filling space with a milky light.) At the bottom is a meteor streaking across the sky.

Below is an telescopic picture showing deep space in the distance with a meteor streaking across the sky.

 

 If you want to see these amazing events, all it takes is a dark place, a chair in which you can recline, and patience. (And ideally, a "New" moon, i.e., when the moon isn't up at night taking over the sky with its bright light.) Let your eyes adjust while you sip some wine, plan to spend a half hour watching the sky, and you'll be surprised at what you see.

We saw six bright meteors, including two that were "all time personal record" territory. We also saw six or seven satellites, about half moving south and half moving north. 

Once your eyes adjust to the darkness, the sky is very rewarding and memorable to look at . A year from now we won't remember whatever Netflix movie we saw this week. But we'll still remember sitting out and watching meteors.

Try it. You'll probably agree that it's very worth taking time to witness what's going on up above our heads.