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The Leonids
Nov. 19th, 2003 02:19 amThough it's not true, I keep thinking that my very first Live Journal entry was about going with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carbonel to Baylor Regional Park to see the Leonids in the very wee hours, last year at about this time.
This year the Minnesota Astronomical Society didn't bother having an event at their observatory, and the predictions, while varying somewhat wildly, were all for much smaller numbers of sightings. I decided to go outside at the proper time and see what the back yard had to offer.
It was a perfect clear night when I went out, not very cold, but with a heavy fall of dew. I was deeply dismayed to realize that the new security lights put up by the classic automobile repair place on 38th, which building is on our alley, have made the back yard a far less useful place for stargazing. I don't know if Eric would still be able to see all the stars in Lyra from there. I wandered about holding up my arm, and then my hat, to block the horrific lights. I don't know why they don't feel motion-sensing lights are sufficient. I saw one small faint streak. After a while I lost confidence that I was looking in the proper direction, and came inside and looked at the Leonid page. No, I was right. But I read their advice and realized that, lacking a reclining lawn chair, I would probably do better just lying on my back on the ground. I snagged a large leaf bag as I went back out, arranged it just east of the rose bush, and lay down. The appalling lights disappeared, blocked by I am not sure what. The stars came out, and out, and out; it was one of those nights when, even in the city, even with streetlights blurring the alley with glare and the auto place stunning the shadows with their paranoia, you could look at any two stars and see between them another. I lay there very happily, silently greeting Orion and the Pleiades and Jupiter. Eric, who is neither here where he belongs nor in California, but visiting a friend, providentially called me earlier in the evening to say he'd arrived safely at his destination, and remarked that he had noticed the previous evening that Jupiter was in Leo at the moment. That is the only reason I knew I was looking at Jupiter, though I would have been tolerably certain that it was a planet.
It was very quiet. You can always hear the traffic on 35W from our yard, and the streetlight nearest our garage was emitting an occasional harrassed spit; I really hoped that it would burn out, but it did not. Otherwise there was nothing. My glasses fogged up periodically. I lay gazing into the sky, above and around the radiant, as instructed. One more thin yellow streak went down the sky and vanished. I thought of all the times Eric had shown me stars from this yard, how Raphael and I had once seen the aurora, how David come out to look at Mars with me in September, how I had gone out night after night with binoculars when I was writing Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, looking at the eternal sky with imaginary eyes.
When I was both cold and hungry, I came inside. I am pleased at how many doors to the universe my back yard contains.
Pamela
carbonel to Baylor Regional Park to see the Leonids in the very wee hours, last year at about this time.This year the Minnesota Astronomical Society didn't bother having an event at their observatory, and the predictions, while varying somewhat wildly, were all for much smaller numbers of sightings. I decided to go outside at the proper time and see what the back yard had to offer.
It was a perfect clear night when I went out, not very cold, but with a heavy fall of dew. I was deeply dismayed to realize that the new security lights put up by the classic automobile repair place on 38th, which building is on our alley, have made the back yard a far less useful place for stargazing. I don't know if Eric would still be able to see all the stars in Lyra from there. I wandered about holding up my arm, and then my hat, to block the horrific lights. I don't know why they don't feel motion-sensing lights are sufficient. I saw one small faint streak. After a while I lost confidence that I was looking in the proper direction, and came inside and looked at the Leonid page. No, I was right. But I read their advice and realized that, lacking a reclining lawn chair, I would probably do better just lying on my back on the ground. I snagged a large leaf bag as I went back out, arranged it just east of the rose bush, and lay down. The appalling lights disappeared, blocked by I am not sure what. The stars came out, and out, and out; it was one of those nights when, even in the city, even with streetlights blurring the alley with glare and the auto place stunning the shadows with their paranoia, you could look at any two stars and see between them another. I lay there very happily, silently greeting Orion and the Pleiades and Jupiter. Eric, who is neither here where he belongs nor in California, but visiting a friend, providentially called me earlier in the evening to say he'd arrived safely at his destination, and remarked that he had noticed the previous evening that Jupiter was in Leo at the moment. That is the only reason I knew I was looking at Jupiter, though I would have been tolerably certain that it was a planet.
It was very quiet. You can always hear the traffic on 35W from our yard, and the streetlight nearest our garage was emitting an occasional harrassed spit; I really hoped that it would burn out, but it did not. Otherwise there was nothing. My glasses fogged up periodically. I lay gazing into the sky, above and around the radiant, as instructed. One more thin yellow streak went down the sky and vanished. I thought of all the times Eric had shown me stars from this yard, how Raphael and I had once seen the aurora, how David come out to look at Mars with me in September, how I had gone out night after night with binoculars when I was writing Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, looking at the eternal sky with imaginary eyes.
When I was both cold and hungry, I came inside. I am pleased at how many doors to the universe my back yard contains.
Pamela
