Camping during Perseids Meteor Shower


August 16, 2022

My wife and I went camping in the Colorado mountains this past weekend, August 11-13.  August 11 was the full moon.  And the peak of the Perseids meteor shower was going to be the next night.  Due to the full moon, the sky was very bright, lighting up the meadow around us such that we didn’t need flashlights to see our surroundings.  And even with this bright sky I was still able to see 4 shooting stars, two of which I would consider to be “fireballs”, with long, bright tails behind them, quite visible even against a nearly blue sky.

As you can see, the photos I took of the full moon cresting through and over the surrounding forest make the sky look almost like daylight.  These photos were taken with my iPhone, without any moon filters or other photographic gear, so the quality is pretty poor (these were the best two photos out of nearly 100 I tried to capture).  But you can see my point about how bright the sky was.   And you can see that there were thin layers of clouds all over the sky, and yet I was still able to see 4 shooting stars.

 

 

Unfortunately the next night was quite cloudy.  We really couldn’t see the stars at all.  But we still enjoyed hanging out by the campfire until well after midnight.  And on the third night we were exhausted from our activities earlier in the day, plus staying up late the previous two nights, so we ended up going to bed early, before 10:00.  The sky was just starting to clear up from earlier thunderstorms, but we were too tired to stick it out.  So we didn’t see anything that night, either.

Anyway, it was great to go camping, and exciting to still see a few Perseid meteors, even against a bright moonlit sky!