So have you picked the spot from which you are going to watch the Perseid meteor shower this August?

A lot of web sites offer tips and pointers for choosing a viewing site, and some have detailed instructions on how to do actual meteor counts that can be submitted to the International Meteor Organization to contribute to their official estimates of the shower's zenithal hourly rate (ZHR). Most say to bundle up and sit in a lawn chair, but with a little planning you can make the most out of your meteor viewing experience, weather permitting of course. For meteor viewing, you don't need a telescope- in fact the naked eye is the prefered method since you can see a wider area of the sky. But I always bring a pair of binoculars to look at the other stars, the star clouds of the summer Milky Way, or to identify a satellite or two that will inevitably pass overhead.

In my experience, the two most important factors are having a clear dark sky and an unobstructed horizon. In order to have a sky with a good limiting magnitude, where you can see the Milky Way across the sky without optical aid, you pretty much have to get away from any big cities. This year we are going to the Poconos, and staying in a resort just outside the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. I know the skies are dark there- not much light pollution- so my only challenge is going to be to find a campsite with a large clearing without a lot of "safety" lighting. The resort itself may not have many areas where they turn all the lights off, so we may have to go down closer to the shore of the Delaware River, but we will have to watch out for bears, skunks, and other wildlife(!).

One trick I have found to get an unobstructed horizon, even in an urban area, is to go to a place along side a body of water, like the shore of a lake, or an ocean beach. If that's not possible in an urban area, sometimes a large parking lot can serve the same function. The only problem with a parking lot is that there are usually a lot of street lights, so another "trick" is to go to the parking lot of a CHURCH(!)- since their parking lot is only full on Sundays or Wednesdays, or in the mornings if they run a daycare center, at night they tend not to have a lot of bright lights. If I am trying to observe something that is low on the horizon in a particular direction, I will go to the side of the parking lot in the opposite direction. In the case of the Perseids, the shower radiant will be rising in the northeast sky at about 11 PM, so the best place to be would be the south-west side of the clearing. For viewing planets when they are rising or setting, the same logic applies.

In years past, some of my most memorable meteor shower experiences have taken place on or near water. The absolute best time was in 1974 when I saw the Perseids from a beach in Wareham Massachusetts near Cape Cod- that year there was a burst of meteors after midnight with a zenithal hourly rate in the hundreds(!). In the 1980s, one time we slept out on a boat on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and watched the stars- not as many meteors that year, but an incredible view of the summer Milky Way with an unobstructed view in all directions. In 1993, I was on a blanket in Virginia Beach, and even through scattered clouds I saw several fireballs even though it was before midnight. The unpredictability of whether the shower will be a hit or miss is part of what makes it exciting for me. This year all indications are that this will be a good year - there will be no moon in the sky, and the peak is predicted to take place just after midnight on August 12-13 for the eastern USA.