Coyote, 8/12 3:30 AM

by Stephen Migol

My wife and I changed our Perseid watching plans from early evening to early morning to accomodate a road trip to southern CA. We arrived at Coyote at about 3:30 in the morning, glad to see stars clearly as we'd been watching the thick layer break up a little bit on our drive out of Sunnyvale. We were the only ones at the lot when we got there.

At first, there was a full sky of clear, stable stars. I counted 9 stars nekkid eye in the Pleiades, of course, I do wear glasses, so it's not really "unaided". Double Cluster was visible unaided, as well as M31. Looking at M31 with our binocs (8x42 Ultraviews), the field was scattered with myriad small stars that screened the galaxy. The greyness of the galaxy filled 4 degrees of the 8 degree FOV, with some texture visible in the edges. I also tried to pick out NGC7k with the unfiltered binocs and *did* see a marked greyness in the right area and shape, but this could be the "power of suggestion". However nice the sky seemed at the time, we were there to watch for meteors.

Wind picked up a bit more and some clouds did move across the sky. A haze did move in, limiting our viewing to the zenith to the eastern horizon. In about an hour, the stars were gone and we had counted about 30 meteors, no fireballs, bolides, or clear colors. Just a handful left trails lasting more than a few seconds.

By the time we left, the temp had dropped to 57 degrees!

Our road trip brought us over 152 going east. We watched the moon and venus appear through the gaps in the hills and then watched the sunrise as we headed south on I-5.

The later part of our trip brought us up to Palomar and we went on the self-guided tour. In conversation with one of the staff, we found out that there was a meteor party just outside of the gate overnight as well.

Given the circumstances and our schedule, I'm glad for what we did see.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Aug 16, 2004 12:26:20 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 08, 2005 12:16:10 PT