Oh I am so excited at the moment. I just remembered that it is shooting star time again (: or meteor showers as more sophisticated, unromantic people would call it.
So I went online and researched a little. We are about to witness the Perseid shower which can be best viewed predawn (one hour before the morning twilight). The associated comet is the Swift-Tuttle and with around 50 sights per hour, when the sky is moonless.
Okay I thought to myself, now let’s just sort out the details and get the alarm set to have a front row seat for this nice event.
Weeeeeell a couple of obstacles seem to want to cross my way. First of all last night was a full moon. Great, so I will see less shooting stars due to that little fact. Then, as it will be in the middle of the night, I will have to watch the show from inside the city, decreasing the number a bit further. Dublin might not be a big city, but there are still a number of lights around. Of course the weather also wants to mess with me and reports announce broken clouds for tonight and mostly cloudy for the following.
But that is not stopping me from still setting my alarm and paying a little visit to our roof top terrace tonight (:
So I only had to figure out the time now. Further research totally caught me off guard as I had to find out that, besides the novel coming up as the number one google result, there are multiple forms of twilight! I never knew that! I actually found it quite interesting to read into the whole explanation, scattering, angles, SCIENCE baby (: I feel pretty good about myself now, that I increased my knowledge (and vocabulary) by quite a bit!
At this point I also want to say that as much as I like a beautiful sunset, the twilight afterwards can just be as stunning. Especially here in Dublin.
So take home message for tonight: Set alarm tonight for 2 am, as I assume when mentioning one hour before twilight they mean the astronomical one. Uhh this is so exciting! Enjoy watching miracles happen (:
fiftyshadesoftomorrow 