Wednesday night, cloud covered the night sky, so there was no point in going outdoors to look up in the hope of seeing the odd Perseid meteor descending to earth. Yesterday, our friends Keith and Claudine arrived from Geneva, to give Keith sufficient time to prepare for his annual summer organ concert at St John's. After they'd retired to bed, I slipped out and walked out into Llandaff Fields to see what I could see.
Before I'd left the street I caught the end of one bright meteor out of the corner of my eye, but no more during my ten minute walk into the darkness away from the main road. Impulsively, I'd left the house without a jacket, and the light breeze was enough to chill me and drive me straight back home for a jacket. On my second sortie out to the same spot in the middle of the Fields I saw four different trails blazed across the sky in different directions over a half hour period, and thus satisfied, I retired to bed, before midnight, grateful that the sky had been clear enough to allow me to witness this memorable occasion.
The Meteorwatch website crashed under the sheer volume of enquirers wanting to find out, or offer information about sightings. Let's hope that next year this commendably amateur effort to record the occasion will be backed by the technical capacity of the global academic science community, with all their super computers and giant data servers.
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