August 15, 2009: Perseid Report

Michael Huster

It's a couple of days late, but...

On Wed. Aug. 12th, my wife and I drove down from Redding for the Giants day game. Great game beating the Dodgers. The game included several bad ump calls against the Giants, a brawl, a weird play with Sandoval dodging a tag which one ump called out and another called safe, Lincecum within a strike of winning the game, giving up the tying run. Wilson finished the ninth, pitched a scoreless 10th and Uribe hit a walkoff home run. Whew! Then we enjoyed steak and ribs at the ACME Chophouse before heading home.

On the way back we stopped at the Sacramento National Wildlife Reserve off of I5 near Willows about 9:30. The NRW was just north of the smoke plume from the Summit fire. We paid the $3 entrance fee even though the place was deserted. There was still some gloaming from the sunset, but it is a fairly dark location 1/2 mile from the freeway. We set up lounge chairs, applied Cutter wipes, and watched for about an hour. We saw 36 meteors, 6 of which were fireballs with distinct red, glowing heads and trails. We could tell the radiant was from the direction of Cass/Perseus. Two of the meteors were faint and "backwards." The meteors seemed to come in groups. Nothing for ten minutes, then three or four in the next few minutes. (Is this Poisson statistics in action?) Our rate then was 36/hour which is within the peak range usually cited for the Perseids. Well, it also makes a nice birthday present every year for my wife. I wanted to stay until the number of meteors equaled her age, but that would have taken a little bit longer.

Michael Huster
Redding, CA