I took my family to watch the Perseid meteor shower up in the hills of Los Altos on Monday night, August 11th. Cars were parked in nearly every pull-off along the way.

The sky looked clear (but a little "thick") as we started out around 9:00. We were parked, unpacked, and sitting in our chairs by 10:30. My wife saw the first "good one" dropping brightly out of the sky near Sagittarius while my back was turned to close the van door (doh!)

The Moon seemed extremely bright for first quarter. It was easy to see everything around us, including some fog which poured over a low ridge to fill in a gully below us in under of 5 minutes. The pool of fog dissipated as quickly as it arrived about 30 minutes later.

I started out the night trying to face South, as was my plan. The Moon was almost painfully bright to start with, so I turned mostly toward the radiant and looked up as much up as I could. From there I saw many short, dim streaks, and a few fairly bright ones that were lost overhead before I could turn to track them.

By 10:45 the kids were finally asleep in the van, and my wife and I were able to quietly enjoy the view for the rest of the night. There was still no major activity to speak of at this point; just some occasional streaks.

At about 15 Seconds prior to 11pm (which was the recommended time to start looking for a peak) a group of 4-6 coyotes started howling and singing. At 5 seconds before 11pm, a small storm of Perseids zipped from the zenith down to the southern horizon in a matter of seconds. It was as if that were the official kickoff of "Perseid Watch 97"!

Meteor activity continued to come and go in little storms like this throughout the night. We saw as many faint "zips" as we saw bright fiery trails -- at least a couple dozen of each. There were plenty "oohs" and "aahs" echoing through the hills that night.

There were also numerous sporadics (including some leftover S. Delta Aquarids). Most of the bright Perseids we saw were noticeably bluish or greenish in hue. The others tended toward green or white. There was one non-Perseid in particular that was quite "sparkly" as it descended while changing from white to green.

The Southern sky gradually darkened as the Moon crept closer to the horizon. The Moon, now yellow-orange, seemed to vanish within seconds of making first "contact" with the ground. The sky became considerably darker almost immediately after moonset.

I continually moved my chair from facing NE, to SE, and eventually SW as it became possible to do so. After the moon was gone, the Milky Way was nearly as bright as on a good night at Fremont Peak. I kept thinking that the city must be completely covered with fog, but the light domes were still too bright and high for that to be the case. It was as if the domes only reach so far before abruptly ending in untainted dark sky.

I had been noticing throughout the evening that the stars were VERY steady, and was wishing that I had my telescope to try and get some high-power views of Jupiter and Saturn. Soon I also noticed that everything was getting damp, and I finally had to collapse the tripod and put my dew-dripping binocular inside to dry off.

We continued to watch the short meteors outbursts (separated by minutes of nothingness) until about 2am when we were the last ones in our immediate area. On the way down, we saw none of the other cars we had seen on the way up, but we did get treated to multiple deer sightings (about 7 deer total). Most of them walked nonchalantly down the middle of the road as we pulled up next to them for a closer look before they would finally decide to disappear into the brush.

As we descended we could see that the city lights were still quite visible through what looked like a very thin haze below us. We never drove through an obvious fog layer, but at some point we suddenly noticed that the sky above us was orange with light pollution, and there were absolutely zero stars visible through it. My guess is that it was just a hazy, moist layer. Something that would appear transparent during the day (as we saw on the way up), but able to reflect enough light pollution back down to fully blot out all of the stars. When I got home, the weather channel simply listed the conditions as mostly cloudy with the "ceiling" at 1600 feet. I never saw any clouds.... just an orange reflection.

Although we saw only about 60 meteors in our 3.5 hours of watching, I would have to call our Perseid trip as a complete success. Hopefully enough bright streaks were etched into our memories to last until the next time.