FWIS3

Are we going through one of the annual meteor showers at the moment? I stepped outside last night, and I saw about five meteors in a ten minute period (plus two satellites - neat!). Lucky fluke or shower?

Ah! Could be - the source I looked at had different dates, so I thought maybe not. Couldn't tell you just where in the sky the things appeared to be coming from - too much light pollution to make out many constellations - but they appeared to be west-east. And according to my planetarium software, Lyra was apparently pretty much right over my head at the time, so I'm not sure these are those.

But, hey, I'm no astronomer.

I went outside and saw a similar sight.
Every few seconds in random directions.
It was amazing.

Then I realised they were fireflies.

Pfft. These were not those. Not very common up here.

In dark skies you see an estimated meteor a minute just from chance. So yeah, could be a fluke even if your skies weren't really dark.

Huh. I didn't think they were that frequent. That's really interesting, thanks.

There's alot of dust out there, and we slam into it constantly.

Oh, I know that. I just didn't think it would be visible to that degree.

Thumper wrote:There's alot of dust out there, and we slam into it constantly.

Yeah, the Universe is a real mess. Be nice if someone cleaned it up...

SUCK, SUCK, SUCK!