Have always wanted to stay up late enough or wake up early enough to see a meteor shower, and last night I finally did. I woke up at 2:00 am to make sure I was ready for a 2:30 peak. Earlier in the evening, I asked my 10 year old son Benjamin if he wanted me to wake him up for it. He seemed excited about it at the time, but when I woke him up, he rolled over and asked if I could video tape it. I has second thoughts about waking him up on a school night so that was probably for the best. However, The truth was, I wasn't sure if I could video tape it or not, because I wasn't certain what I was going to be looking at.

After checking to make sure there were no clouds and putting on my heaviest jacket to warm me from the cold weather that was in the teens, I went out into the back yard and stood and looked up at the sky. Again, I wasn't sure what I was looking for, and I didn't know what direction to look to find what I didn't know I was going to see. I did a slow 360 degree turn with one eye towards the sky and one eye looking out for anything anything that could be generally sneaking up on me in the dark. Then right about when I got to what I thought was the little dipper a quick flash shot across the sky above where I was looking. I wasn't sure at first, but then I saw a second one and knew it wasn't just my eyes. I never knew "shooting stars" were that fast, but the can travel as fast as 90,000 mph and be as small as a grain of sand. One of the highlights was a smal cluster of about five that seemed to be traveling together. Meteor showers occur when earth passes through debris that trails off from a comet. They happen a couple times a year and get their names from the constellations that they seem to emanate from. This particulare meteor shower was the Quadrantid meteor shower and is names after a constellation that is no longer used.

I am setting my calendar alarm to remind me of the next ones in April and may, because it was definitely worth getting up to see and hopefully it won't be so cold.