3 replies to this topic

[revans]

I was outside a few nights ago around midnight, looking at the area between the Coathanger cluster and M27 with my Oberwerk 15x70 Deluxe.  I knew that the Perseid meteor shower was going on, but I'm more interested in hunting deep sky objects with my binoculars and looking for meteors is probably best done without holding an instrument up to your eyes.  

 

Anyway, to my great surprise, while I was looking at a star asterism and trying to decide where I was exactly located in the sky, a meteor streaked across my binocular FOV.  The sight only lasted a small fraction of a second but, startled as I was, I registered a lot of detail in that very small amount of time.  The meteor was brilliant orange and was leaving an actual trail of "sparks" as it raced across the FOV.  

 

If I had wanted to see a meteor streaking across the sky in my binoculars, it would never happen.  I think it is most likely to happen completely by chance.  

 

Rick

[SMark]

You might be surprised how often that will happen. It happened to me (again) just a couple weeks ago while I was viewing M31 with my BT-100. 

[dnayakan]

I’ve had the most luck with meteor showers using just my eyes. I see lots of birds and bats against the moon in the BTs. Missed the peak of the Perseids due to clouds but did catch a few on a couple of nights preceding, including one quite prominent, sparkly fellow. 

[Chuck2]

You might be surprised how often that will happen. It happened to me (again) just a couple weeks ago while I was viewing M31 with my BT-100. 

Same here, pretty common to catch faint meteors streaking across the BT’s wide FOV.
Over 50 years of observing I’ve even caught a few bright ones leaving trails.

Long time ago I caught a rare bolide in my 10” Newtonian. It completely zapped the FOV and shocked me, the equivalent to someone creeping up on you in the dark popping off a camera flash in your face!

 

Then there are faint satellites, probably catch 8-10 on an average nights observing.