Watching Meteors in the South Lake Tahoe Sky

July 30th, 2009 categories: Lake Tahoe Real Estate, South Lake Tahoe, CA, Stateline, NV

South Lake Tahoe Meteor Watching Season

South Lake Tahoe Meteor Season is Now Upon Us.

Living in LA for so long had us wonder. With the nighttime sky so bright from all of the city lights, one often wondered if the stars were still there. We certainly couldn’t see them. (One could see the flashing lights of ever present helicopters patrolling the city, but that was pale in interest compared to Orion.)

When we moved to South Lake Tahoe, that first night that we were here in our home, a most wonderful thing happened. Sitting there on our deck, the sky was dark, black, and the stars shined magnificently. Order was restored in the world.

South Lake Tahoe Meteor Watching SeasonWe’ve been here 8 years now, and we still don’t take the wonder of the night sky for granted. Every night, even if its just for a moment, I walk out on the deck and marvel at the sky. Sometimes we even sleep out there, just to be under the stars.

Well, don’t you just know it; it even gets better than that. We actually have a meteor watching season up here at the Lake, and it’s upon us know. In entirety, here’s an article out of the Nevada Appeal via the Associated Press about watching meteors in South Lake Tahoe.

(article follows below)

Meteor Watching Season in South Lake TahoeTime to bust out your telescope, or at least a lawn chair and a blanket.

The peaks of several summer meteor showers are just around the corner, and Northern Nevada provides a seemingly inexhaustible variety of viewing spots to watch cosmic castoffs burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere and light up the night sky.

Although the timing of the moon cycle this year might hamper viewing by lightening the pitch darkness that provides the best conditions for watching meteor showers, this summer should still provide ample opportunity to see the wish-inspiring occurrences.

"The good news is we’ve got some meteor showers coming up, the bad news is that they’re not going to be totally awesome," said Dan Ruby, associate director of the Fleischmann Planetarium in Reno.

The best time to see meteors is between 1 and 4 a.m., but anytime between midnight and sunrise will work, Ruby said.

August is typically the best summer month for meteor watching, and the Perseids shower is likely to be the most active period of the season, said Paul Guttmann, an adjunct professor of astronomy at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village. But the whole summer season is fair game, Guttmann added.

"If you lay on your back on any summer night, you’ll see meteors," Guttmann said. But for the best show, Ruby and Guttmann said to keep an eye out for these three summer showers, named after the constellations where the shooting starts usually seem to originate from:

Capricornids: When it peaks: July 29 and 30 How many meteors you can expect: about 15 per hour

Delta Aquarids: When it peaks: July 28 and 29 How many meteors you can expect: about 20 per hour

Perseids: When it peaks: Aug. 12 and 13 How many meteors you can expect: 60 per hour

Tags: , , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 10:17 am and is filed under Lake Tahoe Real Estate, South Lake Tahoe, CA, Stateline, NV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Real Esate Tomato Chiclet