It's 7:30AM and Heather and I are just getting home. A late night of partying? No. We were up most of the night to watch the Leonid meteor shower.
I set my alarm for 2:30AM and then picked Heather up at her place. She was groggy, but well prepared with two pillows, a jacket and some Gatorade. I brought the sleeping bag and a third pillow. That's the great thing about meteor showers... you don't need any fancy equipment.
You do need a dark sky however. By 3:00AM we were heading out I-20 east of Atlanta. We drove for about 45 minutes, picked a random exit and headed south. On back country roads we saw little traffic so pulled off on the side of the road and threw down our sleeping bag. There was traffic, but only about one car every few minutes. We angled the car to block the light from the one direction that most cars seemed to come from.
I've been looking for a good meteor shower my whole life. It seems that every time I try to see one it turns out to be a dud, I don't wake up or I it turns out cloudy. The Leonid shower was the best of my lifetime and I'm glad that I got to see it.
We arrived at our unplanned destination at about 4:15AM. Immediately upon getting out of the car I saw shooting stars. They were not subtle. They were incredibly bright with great orange tails. They arced across the sky and sometimes we could see three at a time.
Heather and I both saw a few fireballs... a meteor that suddenly explodes when it hits a certain point in the atmosphere. One left a trail that was visible for over a minute. We already see reports from California of a similar fireball. I'd be willing to bet that it was the same meteor.
It was cold out. We huddled on top of the sleeping bag for a while, but were too cold. In a fit of brilliance we decided to put the bag on top of us. That was the trick. We were able to watch until about 6:15AM as the sun was already beginning to lighten the sky.
Throughout the night we were trendsetters. Other meteor watchers pulled up, spurred by our choice of location. At one point we had three other groups of people. Initially it was us in the middle of nowhere.
On the way home we stopped at the Awful Waffle for some breakfast. We went home for some much-needed sleep. A great night under the stars!
They say that there will be another Leonid meteor shower next year, but that it will be obscured by a full moon. After that we'll have to wait until 2099 for the next big one.
SufferFest 08 Day 4
