Ohhh, I’m still so tired. I’m supposed to catch up on sleep on the weekends, not lose even more of it. I was up till 4 again last night…but it was definitely worthwhile. We saw the Leonid meteor shower, and it was really spectacular.
I headed over to Aaron’s at 1 and we met up with our Canadian friend Steve. The three of us headed the half mile from Aaron’s apartment up the hill to the tiny Stanford Observatory, which is right next to the golf course. There were people all over the ground so we ducked through the fence and joined them. There we were, lying on the fairway of one of the golf course holes, on the top of a hill in the middle of the night. You could see the stars amazingly well considering we’re only thirty miles from San Francisco, and not “out of town” by any means — I could see more stars up on the hill than I can see from my driveway in Charlotte.
I had never seen a meteor shower before, and it was awesome! We were outside from about 1:30 until a little after 3, right during the peak of the storm, and we quickly lost count of how many meteors we saw. The average was probably around 3 meteors per minute, but at times we saw a lot more. We’d see three streak across the sky at once, or catch one out of the corner of both eyes. You could hear “oohs” and “aahs” coming from all over the hill, and it was hard not to say it every single time. We even saw a few really fantastic earthgrazers — meteors that burned brightly and left long green trails that didn’t disappear immediately.
it was one of the coolest things i’ve ever seen.
