By far the most amazing Meteor Shower I ever saw was maybe about 10 years ago ( very roughly ) when there was a unique shower where the meteor material was differant than normal and it caused the streaks across the sky to be very vivid and long lasting ( two to three seconds on average ). I saw at least a handful of very large metoeors that night where the smoke/debris trail left behind lasted for as long as five minutes afterwards, and the trails looked much like what a jet contrail looks like. In the dim moonlight I could actually see these remnant trails quite well with my 10X50 binoculars.

And right as I was going in for the evening I saw one last very unique one which I saw almost directly above me. It started with a sudden bright light that didn't go across the sky like usual but stayed in the same position getting brighter and brighter until it disintegrated in a bright greenish and orange flash. There was a small roundish clould very visible with the naked eye left behind. I looked at it with my binoculars immediately after the event and could see the remnants of this meteor burnout, and I could see the cloud drifting in the strong upper atmosphere winds which clearly showed it had come quite close. I realized that this meteor came out of space headed directly in my direction, a course of a meteor I have never witnessed before. Also the amount of meteors that night was said to be 60 to 100+ per hour according to the local newspaper. I watched them in the early morning hours by laying on a cot in our backyard in my sleeping bag to keep warm as it was a cooler time of year :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2010 03:21PM by Wizard.