Its raining meteors!!

When was the last time, you just stared at the sky continuously for five minutes? I bet it would have been years ago, when we were kids, when we felt that the sky had a lot of hidden treasures. It was the time when we dreamed of becoming a pilot to go near the sky or fly in a rocket into the outer space. Those days when we badly wanted to become a rocket scientist or an astronomer.

Yesterday was different. I did stare at the sky for almost 20 minutes just to catch a glimpse of the pereseid meteor shower. After spending 20 minutes on August 11, 2009 in vain just staring at the fog covered black sky, I was very skeptical on catching a glimpse of the same yesterday.

With a great view of the Verdugo mountains (The same view as you see in the photo in my blog header.) from my balcony or patio at the third floor of an old 70s wooden apartment, me and my wife almost had one-fourth of the sky under our view. With lots of fog (might be smog given that we are in Los Angeles county) and the temperature low, it was a mixed chance of seeing the meteor. Being close (almost 30 miles) to LAX, we had lots of airplanes flying by and the city lights from Burbank towards the West made us more doubtful.

Then suddenly we saw it. It was a quick streak of white light, bright at the front and fading away forming a long tail. It was really an exhilarating experience (I haven’t seen one before). I had missed the Comet Hale-Bopp, which was visible from India at some point of time. We waited for some more time and we ended up seeing 10 of them. It was really worth the wait.

The only sad part of this entire story is that I could not catch it in my camera. A very sad thing for me, given my liking to photography.