| Observer: | Tom Campbell |
| Location: | Iola, Kansas (Long: 95°24'W Lat: 37°55'N) |
| Time: | 9:45pm - 10:30pm CDT (02:45-03:30 UT) |
| Transparency: | Clear (8/10) |
| Seeing: | Stable (8/10) |
| Weather: | Temperatures in the upper 60s. There was a little breeze. |
Tonight's observing plan was to simply observe the Perseid meteor shower. I grabbed my recorder, portable CD player, my reclining lawn chair, and set up shop on my patio. My musical selection tonight was Enya's "Paint the Sky With Stars" CD. I hoped that the Perseids would do just that.
I observed pretty diligently from about 10:15pm to 12:30am CDT. My dad came out and watched with me for a while, allowing me to go inside and get a warmer jacket (who'd have thought, in August!). I added his counts to mine for the 5 minutes I was indoors.
There weren't as many Perseids as I had hoped, but what they lacked in quantity, they more than made up for in quality. Several of them were brighter than Vega. Most appeared white, but I did see two yellow meteors and one red one.
Here's my detailed report, broken up into 15-minute segments:
| Time | Meteors | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 10:15p-10:30p | 2 | The first meteor I saw tonight was bright and red, streaking north to south low in the eastern sky. A good omen, I hoped. |
| 10:30p-10:45p | 5 | The first meteor in this time segment was also bright, but white, passing through Ursa Minoris. |
| 10:45p-11:00p | 2 | Just before 11:00p, a nice bright yellow meteor zipped across the low northern sky, going northeast to northwest. |
| 11:00p-11:15p | 4 | |
| 11:15p-11:30p | 3 | |
| 11:30p-11:45p | 3 | A few clouds are coming in from the north. They are fairly thin, but show up brightly from my town's skyglow. |
| 11:45p-12:00a | 3 | By midnight, the clouds had moved off, leaving the sky clear once again. |
| 12:00a-12:15a | 1 | The one meteor during this time period was worth the wait. It started out as a medium-bright meteor heading south, but quickly began to brighten into a yellow fireball, finally disappearing behind some trees in the south. It's long trail remained visible for several seconds afterward. |
| 12:15a-12:30a | 3 | |
| TOTAL: | 26 | 11.5 meteors/hr |