
Show HN: Perseids meteor shower from space - typpo
http://www.ianww.com/meteor-showers/perseids/
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nsrivast
Last night at midnight I rented a zipcar with some friends, drove 30 minutes
outside Philadelphia to a state park, lay down on the grass and watched
shooting stars. Even in a region with significant light pollution [1], we saw
clear and bright meteors every 2-3 minutes.

Coolest thing I've done in a long time. Definitely going on the fun-dad-
activity-list for when I have kids.

[1]
[http://darksitefinder.com/maps/unitedstates-8color.html](http://darksitefinder.com/maps/unitedstates-8color.html)

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Florin_Andrei
I live in the middle of the Silicon Valley, where we have very high levels of
light pollution.

We just walked to a soccer field nearby. Took out some neoprene mats, unrolled
them on the grass. Lay down on the mats, cover up with blankies. Now stay
still and look up.

In about an hour or so the kids saw a dozen shooting stars, some of them very
bright.

I was too busy searching for Ceres with the telescope to see any of that.

The Perseids don't care much about light pollution, which is why we had great
success last night. But other meteor showers are much more sensitive to light.

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pbhjpbhj
UK checking in, between our group we saw 4 at a rate of 8 per hour around
22h45 GMT. Personally saw 2 very bright meteors.

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tmoullet
Way cool. Just curious, are the Persied points in this map/diagram/art
representations of actual known objects?

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amadeusw
If it is, then we're up for a big show in 2023!

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krylon
Wow, this is really cool!

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simczak
Great visualization! And I like to keep in mind the motion of the entire solar
system: [http://i.imgur.com/S6oyust.gif](http://i.imgur.com/S6oyust.gif)

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jMyles
Is this relative to the galactic core?

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Analog24
No. Unfortunately it's not relative to anything. Nasim Haramein, the guy
behind that animation/idea, is a known physics quack. In the future I would
suggest being skeptical of anything coming from his "institute": The Resonance
Academy ([http://resonance.is/](http://resonance.is/))

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pbhjpbhj
It looks like it's largely correct [scale excepted] relative to a fly-by
following the solar system relative to a point moving away from the sun on a
perpendicular to the plane of the solar system.

Isn't one of the points of relativity that we can choose any point as an
origin - in the gif are the motions relative to the sun [scale excepted]
largely correct?

The main problem the sibling comment notes is that the plane _if_ it were
following the orbit of the sun around the galactic centre it would be inclined
by 60 degrees to motion along the orbit [they also note problems with
exaggeration of the motion of the sun in its vertical motion (relative to the
galactic plane) and in the precession of the plane of the solar system]. That
doesn't make the gif wrong in itself, it just makes it not what people might
assume it is.

Fastidious pedantry, sorry.

If we're going to be right lets be as right as we can; so please post
corrections if I'm wrong at all.

All that aside I'd be really interested in seeing a simulation of the galaxy
that matched observations for the precession of the solar system, movement of
the planets, movement of the sun around the galactic centre. Does such a thing
- that can be run at home - exist?

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Analog24
Relativity does tell us that there are no preferred _inertial_ reference
frames. But the comment I replied to was asking about a very specific
reference frame: the galactic center.

And to one up your pedantry: relativity allows us to define our coordinate
system in any inertial reference frame to compare with other inertial
reference frames. The solar system orbiting the galactic center is _not_
inertial since it is constantly accelerating.

