Blade Edge

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s an Orionid meteor! Yep, it’s time once again to look to the heavens for a great night-time show. Seeing as I was robbed from seeing the last shower in August due to overcast skies, I look forward to more favorable weather this week in order to enjoy one of the more reliable showers during the year. This shower is being reported by multiple sources to be quite spectacular, and is one of the last showers you can catch in still-reasonably-warm temperatures (at least in the northern latitudes like New Jersey). The Taurids peak on Nov 4th, but it can only get colder from here so get on out and enjoy it!

Given that experts are expecting a good showing, don’t worry about missing tonight if you can’t make it out – Wed nite and Thurs nite should be good as well. I do plan to check out all three starting tonight. I’ll update this post with my findings.

In the meantime, and as always, don’t forget to refresh your meteor shower watching knowledge with my 10 invaluable tips.

Wednesday Morning

Pretty decent showing this morning from 5:45 – 6:15. Saw 11 meteors, maybe 15-16 counting the dim ones I might have seen out of the corner of my eye. That is, actually, not too bad of a count for only half an hour of viewing and in my semi-light-polluted area. About 3-4 of them were either big enough to light up and/or entering the atmosphere shallow enough to streak across the sky dramatically. One even flared up! Those are the coolest. I also tracked 3 satellites across the sky. Will probably get out earlier and stay out longer tomorrow morning.

Thursday Morning

Overcast skies prevented me from catching anything. Some slight breakage was happening around 5ish, but as long as the cloud cover stays to the north, lights from the denser-populated areas in that direction reflect off them and just drown out the sky to a good degree.

I’ll be driving out to Philly tonight so I won’t be watching Friday morning either. Oh well.