Leonids
We headed out toward Lick Observatory around 11 p.m. It's at 4200 feet elevation, on Mt. Hamilton, off to the east of San Jose; we figured that the closer-by places would get too much light pollution and/or fog and/or smog. (We'd checked the Mt. Hamilton Webcam to make sure the sky wasn't overcast first.) We'd expected the drive to take about an hour from San Jose; instead it was more like an hour and a half. I was half-asleep for much of the trip, and completely asleep for at least the last 15-20 minutes of it. Good thing I wasn't driving.
Pulled over a little after passing the observatory, joining the dozens of other people lining the sides of the windy mountain road. Got out fold-up chairs and blankets and lots of warm clothing; luckily Mya and Gerry and Kam had brought extra warm stuff, 'cause I wasn't thinking clearly enough to bring my gloves and hat and scarf when I left my place. We bundled up and leaned back and watched the sky.
It wasn't a very comfortable position; no head support. Within 45 minutes, I switched to lying on a pad on the ground. Which wasn't conducive to staying awake. I began to drift off more and more often.
The sky was very clear. Jupiter was bright; some of the others saw a Jovian moon with the binoculars, but I couldn't hold 'em steady enough to be sure I saw it. Lots of stars, crisp and bright.
Occasional meteors now and then for a while, then more. The peak as far as I could tell came somewhere around 2:15 a.m. local time (10:15 UTC), with MTBM (Mean Time Between Meteors) of roughly 3-6 seconds (call it about 10-12 MPM (Meteors Per Minute)), and that was just in the part of the sky that I could see. I couldn't hear Mya and Gerry's count too clearly, but it sounded like they were seeing more than that.
Little streaks in just about all directions, including (oddly) east-to-west. More of them low in the (southern) sky than high in the sky, but dimmer and shorter low in the sky; the ones that did show up in the middle of the sky were clear and long. Cool occasional on-off-on effect that I'm told comes from a rock skipping off the atmosphere.
But after a few minutes of being wide awake around 2:15, I started drifting off again. By 3:15, couldn't keep my eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time; got up and got into the car to sleep (and found that it was a lot colder in the car (I'd been comfortably toasty under all the blankets outside), and that when I was sitting up, car headlights made it impossible for me to sleep). We started packing up to head home around 3:30, I think; that took a good 15 minutes. I slept for most of the drive back; I actually sleep pretty well in cars sometimes. Warm and filled with (quiet) white noise, good background hum. If only it were more comfortable. Anyway, we dropped off Kam around 5, got back to my place around 5:30.
I admit to being a bit underwhelmed, probably due to overly high expectations. People had told me what they'd heard about the '66 shower (opinions varied as to whether it was the 1866 one or the 1966 one), which one observer apparently described as being like driving in snow; hundreds of thousands per hour. I didn't quite expect that, but I did expect more than just one every few seconds. Definitely cool, but I think I'd have found it cooler in a half-hour visit to a semi-dark place near my apt, followed by sleep at home in bed.
But it's good to have Adventures every once in a while. And I'd never been out to Mt. Hamilton before.