With all the media attention currently on this year's Perseids meteor shower with little to no moon, I set up my old Canon 60D (modified) and Rokinon 14mm lens last evening (Friday, August 11) to frame up a few test shots of where the centroid would be around 3 to 4 am as the constellation Perseids rises to the east over our backyard. It had rained hard all day, then as the front swept through our region, the skies became completely clear. I had good seeing conditions (a lot of humidity in the atmosphere), but it was really dark. I recorded 21.8 magnitudes/arc-seconds on my handheld Unihedron Sky Quality meter.
But then at around 12:50 am, clouds started creeping in and the radar and weather app forecasted showers by 3 am. So I covered all the scopes and came inside for the night. Here's an image of the Milky Way at 1 pm. You can see the murkiness, but it was so lovely that I wanted to share it with you here. Revision B is an annotated version that shows the constellations and various targets I have been working on the past year. I didn't see any meteors last night.
Thought maybe I'd get a chance tonight, but the sky conditions are terrible (current conditions are shown below). The National Weather Service has even issued a tornado watch until 9 pm. It's not supposed to clear up, so I leave you with this Milky Way shot instead.
Wishing you clearer skies and no tornadoes!
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