Despite my collection of several telescopes that I try to keep busy each morning during my ongoing search for comets,  I maintain that the simple act of sitting on a lawn chair gazing at meteors is my favorite kind of observing.  

With that in mind, I woke up at 3:20 am on the Wednesday morning. I dressed, put on  a coat, ventured outside, and opened the observatory.  A big cold front had just rushed through, bringing the coldest temperatures since spring, but the sky was fantastic, as the winter Milky Way shone brilliantly overhead.   Before I even reached the observatory, a bright Orionid flashed quickly to the southwest of Orion, its trail leading right back to a blank spot in the sky we call the radiant.

From southern Arizona,  the Orionids are a real treasure.  Their radiant, in the northernmost part of the constellation, soars almost overhead in the last dark hour before the autumn twilight begins. Therefore, we saw meteors coming about in every direction.  The meteors are actually in parallel paths, but because of the effect of perspective, the meteors appear to come from one spot in the sky. It was an unforgettable morning.

During the afternoon that followed, the International Astronomical Union announced that this year’s Orionids were unusually strong, and that that outburst was expected to continue for the next day or two.  So I had another chance to see them!  But the next morning was different; I had a 6 am flight to catch for a visit to Montreal.  After sleeping a paltry two hours, I was up just before 3 am and went outdoors.  For a little less than half an hour I lay sleepily on the observatory floor, watching a brave display of Orionids, almost at the same rate as the previous night.  The real surprise came as Wendee and I left for the airport.  I saw two more Orionids while waiting outside the car, one in the west and another in the north, both leaving trails traceable back to the radiant in Orion.  And finally, a meteor fell near the western horizon as we made our way to the airport.

What do meteors have to do with Sharing the Sky?  Simply this:  meteor observing at its simplest requires absolutely no preparation, just a will to head outdoors and look up.  Although several of the meteors I saw the first night were through the telescope, such an instrument is absolutely unnecessary for this kind of observing.  All meteors ask is that you go outside, relax, and look up.