When you wake up in the middle of the night to see stars, it damned well better be a Kate Upton level event.
well, 3am to 3:45 in Ann Arbor beg to differ. Sadly, I know from personal experience.
That was a terrible night on so many levels. I'd appreciate it, if it became board policy to never again mention the meteor shower flop of '014 again.
sincerly,
Darker Blue
Yeah...2-3am on the west side of AA resulted in 1 meteor....I hated my wife for finding the story on her own and myself for believing it might be fun.
Michigan going 1-11 for this upcoming season, but not calling it a total flop.
was ridiculous for the actual event.
Something akin to being told to watch the most amazing fireworks display you'll ever see and it turns out to be some guy holding a sparkler an a hill behind you.
Best.Description.Ever
+1
you earned it.
Yes it was a total flop. A total and complete flop. I stood in the middle of about a 25 acre field near Alpena about 50 miles from the nearest light of any kind. In other words - a perfect spot to view the cellestial firestorm that NASA promised. AND i got my entire family up and out of bed to join me cause "you dont want to miss this guys - if you do you'll kick yourselves for the rest of your lives."
So at about 3:00am, after staring at the admidty lovely but completely devoid of action night sky for over 90 minutes I had everybody in my family ready to kill me and I was just SURE that if we left all hell would break loose in the sky and we'd miss everything. So we stayed til about 3:30am and then I took everybody back to the lodge - pissed off, wondering if we were now infested with ticks (those bastards are everywhere up north) and tired as hell.
Fuck NASA and their stupid, wrong worthless predictions. Weathermen working third rate stations in the UP laugh at their accuracy. I am convinced that if we ever go the way of the dinosauers and get obliterated by a rouge comet or something they wont notice the damn thing until about 15 minutes to impact.
NASA didn't promise anything. Every press release and article I saw emphasized the extreme uncertainty surrounding the behavior of the comet and its resulting dust trail.
From Nasa: "North America will have a great view of the May Camelopardalids meteor shower tonight. To help make sure of that, NASA has set up alive stream of the event, including views from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
The never-before-seen meteor shower should hit close to midnight and run through Saturday's first few hours. NASA says 200 meteors may whiz by in an hour with even more remaining possible. NASA experts say there hasn't been a shower like this before.
The shower gets its name from the constellation Camelopardalids, also known as the Giraffe, which is where the shooting starts will originate."
Your right - no promise. But they sure did set the expectations bar just a wee bit higher than actual dont you think?
Here's the actual press release (emphasis theirs):
"Scientists anticipate a new meteor shower tonight: the May Camelopardalids, resulting from the dust of periodic comet 209P/LINEAR. No one has seen it before, but the shower could put on a prolific show. The shower is predicted to be active on May 24, 02:30 - 11:00 UTC (May 23, 10:30 p.m. to May 24, 7 a.m. EDT). The peak is projected between 06:00 - 08:00 UTC (2-4 a.m EDT). This will be a one-night-only event.
“Some forecasters have predicted a meteor storm of more than 200 meteors per hour,” said Bill Cooke, lead for NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “We have no idea what the comet was doing in the 1800s. The parent comet doesn’t appear to be very active now, so there could be a great show, or there could be little activity.”
As usual, the further from the original source, the more hyped and simplified everything gets. Then the disappointment is aimed at the source, rather than the media that distorted it.
I guess the fact that representatives for NASA were on NPR, Good Morning America & the Today show on Friday talking up the damn thing somehow made me think THEY thought it was going to be something special. Silly me. I should've just paid attention to their disclaimer and not actually listened to them when they said this "could be on a prolific show" and other hyperbole.
Look - the only reason I knew the damn thing was a thing at all was due to their media blitz on it. So pardon me if I thought that NASA going out and telling everyone to look at the night sky between 2-4am last Friday was an indication something bigger than a normal summer night meteor shower was about to occur.
your bad experience that night, I have to ask you: Is it wrong to have enjoyed your agony that night as described today?
#I'vedonemorethanmyshareofdumbthings
For our all our sakes, just hope it's not ROGUE...
I was wondering how this turned out. I myself packed it in around 12:30. I know that "peak viewing" was supposed to be from 2-4 but I didn't know if you'd see anything before that. I saw one shooting star within five seconds of looking skyward at around 10:30, and then nothing else.
An old friend of mine and I sat outside at his house from 11pm to 4 am and saw 6. It was nice catching up and all but we were really hoping for a good show in the sky.
So the meteor shower was at a few times simply amazing, but the rest of the time non existent.
So can we change its name to the Borges meteor shower?
That was mean. I'm sorry
stayed up for it and then forgot to watch. I checked around 1AM and didn't see anything. Stayed up till about 4:30 AM and then just packed it in and completely forgot to ever go outside again. Felt like a total heel.
I do have to say that the blood moon earlier this year was pretty sweet though, so I guess that is something.
Predictions for years and gotten punked every time. Fortunately I didn't bite on this one and stayed in bed.