atmospheric astronomica

this is about something called the annual perseid meteor shower.

it was scheduled (well, as schedule-friendly as these things can be) to peak the night of august 12-13, although supposedly, it could also be seen early morning on the 12th.

the mechanics are, on the surface, simple enough. the earth, in its yearly sojourn around the sun, runs into the dust left behind by periodic comet temple-tuttle.

now, imagine that. the earth in its relative hugeness, running into a trail left behind by a dirty snowball a few meters wide, and this has been happening for years beyond count (well, years before someone noticed that the shower of seemed to originate in the constellation perseus -- hence perseid meteors).

not sure about the orbital mechanics preventing the earth from running into the comet temple-tuttle itself, but that may be fodder for another post, somewhere if ever down the line...

anyway, set the alarm for 3am sunday, take a hell of a long time to get up, decide to push through with the plan (having earlier informed others by text of the probabilities of the show come 4am). drag long-suffering makati housemate along, and drive to the sucat interchange and cross to the eastern service road, parking by a road next to the commercial outpost i refer to by the presence of a figaro's on its topmost deck.

the eastern sky is dark and cloudfree, and i can't make out where to look for the constellation even with my handy-dandy sky chart. also, the place gives me the creeps, as the road down to an unknown village is unlit except by reflected floodlight from the commercial establishment's parking lot.

failure of nerve, and decide to drive on to the office where, by the light of the other buildings finally discover a means to identify the constellation of choice.

sum total, see no meteors; though glenn did see a satellite of some sort, and this area being where it is as part of the airport's holding pattern, several airplanes going to a fro.

get back home as the sun rises, and check the web. yahoo informs that the main peak should be 9-sunrise sunday night.

now, if it's a good enough shower, it should be visible even in light-polluted makati...

...i recall when living in mandaluyong that there was the beginning of an excellent meteor shower (though don't recall the month) with an intriguing effect: almost as soon as the shower began in earnest, all of a sudden, the sky clouded over.

sunday night, the sky was completely cloudy -- i went outside periodically to check.

there was a strange effect, though. don't know for sure if the meteors had anything to do with it, but even in the absence of thunderstorms in the vicinity, cable reception got scrambled several times.

i do know that one way to track (and count) meteor activity, is to listen to the radio emissions they make as they get pulverized by the friction of their passage in the lower atmosphere. perhaps that emission during a storm is enough to scramble the digital signals from the cable company link satellites or something...

anyway, so much for that.

there's supposed to be another shower sometime in september -- have to look that up, and we'll see how that works out.