Gonna be in the middle of dark skies MI the next week - but rain forecast for Sat-Sun.
Hoping for clear skies!
Oh – thanks for the heads up. I just assumed northwest NV is far enough away and across the Sierras, to not be affected by the smoke. But I see that it is affecting those skies. I’ll keep an eye on that.
Planning on going to a dark sky site around 9800ft up in the Uintas to see if we can’t get above the smoke.
Bad news for ya, Man. That smoke is extreme! We’ve got some wind kicking up in the next few day that has stirred it around a little, but in the wee hours, after it dies down, that shit gets THICK! It was down to about a mile visibility at sun-up. You can look straight up and see a few stars, but near the horizon- forget it.
Granted, I’m just a little south, but Washoe, Carson and most of the valleys/depressions around here are making jerky.
Darn. Doesn’t sound good. I may have to cancel, or change locations. Thanks for that info.
Head out towards Austin. No light pollution, higher elevation and quite a bit farther east.
Once you get past Fallon, as soon as you are out of the smoke, there are lots of wide open places to set up shop.
Yeah thanks, that’s what I am considering. I’ve done US-50 across NV a few times. It’s a little farther but still doable from San Francisco. I’ll keep checking the smoke maps and see how far I should plan on going, and then will be checking the sky as I drive out.
Gotta be flexible, just like the solar eclipse. Thanks again.
The best Perseids I’ve seen were at Yosemite, half a mile from the lodge. It was pitch black dark; I probably should have had a flashlight instead of tripping over logs in the parking lot on the way back to bed.
Saying that, I’m really sorry for those who had vacation plans at Yosemite, especially if they had planned it for this weekend. It was really spectacular.
The Perseids seen from the Yosemite Valley sounds like a great experience.
About smoke affecting the skies, here are some helpful links. Some sources report smoke swaths reaching across Texas to Georgia, so it’s not just the western states.
[ul]
[li]NOAA’s Smoke Forecasting System: https://www.arl.noaa.gov/hysplit/smoke-forecasting/[/li][li]NOAA’s Air Quality Forecast Guidance, at weather.gov: http://airquality.weather.gov[/li][/ul]
This Canadian site gives general clouds forecast (not smoke) for Canada and US lower 48.
[ul]
[li]Gouvernement du Canada — Clouds Forecast For Astronomical Purposes: https://weather.gc.ca/astro/clds_vis_e.html[/li][/ul]
This Forbes magazine article says smoke across from TX to GA: Will Wildfire Smoke Obscure Your View Of The Perseid Meteor Shower?, by Marshall Shepherd.
Excerpt (empasis mine):
If I were traveling to see this, I would head toward the coast. I was in Big Sur last week and there was no smoke. Too close to the water and you may have some fog, but Big Sur is inland a bit - at night a million stars visible. Far from city lights, too.
Nothing great so far here in Lightapolluta land. Lots of haze and clouds. Monday night we saw one decent sky streaker and some faint brief streaks through a break in the clouds. Lots of rain and humidity predicted so I don’t know if we’ll get even one good night in.
Good point. Big Sur should be very good indeed. However, I’m trying for more darkness by cross-referencing three factors:
(1) finding dark areas in the US from one of my favorite pictures, a satellite composite of the earth at night (on NASA’s APOD site: APOD: 2008 October 5 - Earth at Night)
(2) minimizing the propensity for fog near San Francisco, and
(3) (now, thanks to Gatopescado) the NOAA smoke charts.
I have used that NASA earth at night picture as my wallpaper since it first came out in 2000.
Gah. I have to remember to get up to look at this. I’m in a pretty ideal spot. 11200 feet in elevation. The nearest town is 4 miles away and has a population of 400. No steet lights no nothing.
One problem is that our view looks south, so it’s going to be hard to see anything to the north (trees and mountain).
I don’t think that’s a major problem. I saw the Perseids once before and if you just lie on your back and look up at the whole of the sky that you can see, there will be a scattering of shooting stars to the south.
Just PM me your telephone number and I can give you a wake up call. 
It’s supposed to be too cloudy to see it here. Like every other meteor shower ever. Seriously, it’s never been clear here any time I’ve ever anticipated one.
Weather forecast for Northwestern NV is wind, and since most of the smoke is coming up from the south (seems to be a counter-clockwise rotation), Black Rock might not be so bad. But that is a long trip for a half-ass gamble.
I actually saw some blue sky tonight around 7pm. Looking straight up.
I sat out on the back porch last night with one of my children. We first tried at 10 pm and didn’t see anything plus the next door neighbors were being obnoxious so went to sleep and tried again at 4 am. in about an hour we saw for certain 4 but many more that we weren’t positive as meteors. We are in town and have lots of trees, so our viewing area wasn’t great.
I was in a great area to watch Fri night but clouds / rain. Now that I’m back home, in an area w/ more light pollution, we have…clouds / rain. :smack:
7-year-old son and I enjoyed an hour of stargazing…clear night here in Wisconsin. We drove 15 minutes into the farmland to get away from the light pollution of our little city. The meteors were a bit disappointing — he saw two, I saw one — but that’s okay. It was the first serious stargazing we’ve done together, especially since he got his eyeglasses, so it was great, showing him Cygnus and Vega and Mars and the Milky Way. He noticed a “slowly moving star,” and sure enough it was a satellite.
It’s 9pm here, and the sky is almost completely overcast, with thunderheads in the distance. I don’t think I’m going to stay up for another 5 hours with my fingers crossed hoping it clears up.
Oh well, there’s always the Leonids in November.
Here’s a video of the Perseids I made in 2016.
And a couple of individual captures:
