When You Wish Upon A Star...

I have been hearing about and reading about the Perseid meteor shower for several years and have wanted to find a place to view it as well as find someone to go with me to a remote place in the middle of the night.  Last night was my lucky night.  I was able to convince my brother and sister-in-law and 3 of their children, my sister and one of her daughters, and my son and daughter-in-law to go to the desert at midnight to watch shooting stars with me.

The Perseid Meteor Shower occurs every August when the Earth passes through the remains of a comet. The meteor shower radiates out of the constellation Perseus.  During it's peak, you can see 50-100 shooting stars in an hour.

We all congregated at my house at 10:30 p.m (after I woke up from my three hour nap from 7-10 p.m) and shortly after that, we were on the road north of town, away from the city lights.  We drove about 40 minutes and pulled off on a dirt road and went back about 2 miles off the main highway.  I was amazed at how many people had the same idea as we did.  By midnight, we had set up our camp chairs, laid blankets in the back of the pick up, and asked Mother Nature to give us a show.  Just being a short ways away from city lights allowed us to see the stars much better.  I forget how beautiful the night sky is when you get a real view of it.

It wasn't long before we saw our first streak across the sky.  And then another and another.  It certainly wasn't 50 an hour but we saw a significant number.  Some of the shooting stars were so intense, you could see the fire streaming off the back of them.  It was amazing!  In addition to the meteor shower, we also watched the moon rise over the mountains, could see the Milky Way and many of the constellations (and thanks to an iPhone app, we were able to identify what constellations we were looking at) and we even saw a few satellites (thank you Olivia for pointing them out to us).

By 2:15 a.m., us old folks couldn't say awake much longer so we packed everything up and headed for home.  I was in bed by 3:15 a.m.

We all determined that to see a REAL meteor show, we needed to find a more remote location, way away from city lights.  It also would have been more dramatic if there hadn't been a small cloud cover hiding the view.  It made me realize that  something as spectacular as this is getting is getting more and more difficult to observe thanks to pollution and even light pollution.  We really do need to take better care of this beautiful planet that God created for us!

Throughout the evening I kept thinking of the words to one of my favorite hymns:

Oh Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
consider all the worlds thy hands have made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder; 
thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee,
How Great Thou Art!...