Meteor Shower Unseen in the Bukids

Dang! It was overcast both nights. And I think it's going to rain tonight. Too bad.

I remember when I was a kid of - I don't know, six or seven - my mom got us up (my brother and me) at 4 o'clock one morning, dressed us up in sweaters and socks, and took us out onto the golf course outside our house. Then she instructed us to look up into the vast open sky and spot the tiny red dot, which she said was Mars. That was my first experience with looking up into the heavens. Thus started my love/hate affair with science fiction.

I watched the first Star Wars Trilogy, but not the second. I watch Star Trek, the TV Series, but not so much the movies, and I'm not a Trekkie. I like alien movies, but I haven't watched Alien. I'm interested in UFOs and life in outer space, but I don't believe I'll see either in my life time. There was 'ET' and 'Independence Day' and 'Terminator', but there was also 'Species' and 'War of the Worlds' and countless other invasion movies that failed to catch my attention.

Why are we so curious about life in outer space? Why does the US have a department - still up and running today - just for listening for alien activity even though there hasn't been any signal in the last 30 years? What's the catch?

Maybe it has something to do with my comment in my previous blog -- if we take things into perspective, we'll realize that we're simply a tiny speck among specks, living our daily lives aboard a green and blue ball among balls, floating around a sun among suns, lighting a galaxy among galaxies, dotting a nova among novas. All that is in our sky above. Who wouldn't be curious about what goes on up there?

I would. But then again, I'd have to take Physics.

Meteor Shower Tonight

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/star/20091116/tph-pagasa-leonids-light-skies-days-541dfb4.html

There are many things that human hands cannot reproduce. It is times like this that brings out the perspective in life. We are humans, the most advanced beings on Earth, yet the Earth itself is so small that we get to see shooting "stars" the same size out there in the vast blackness of the sky. It's mind-boggling!

The article says it might be difficult for people in the Visayas and Mindanao to view this phenomenon because of the ITCZ. What the writer failed to mention was that it would also be difficult for people in Manila because of the thick smog constantly hovering over the nation's capital. Out here in the Bukids, the only time you won't be able to view the night sky is when it's raining. Even when it is overcast, one can still make out a couple or so stars through the clouds. Right now, it is overcast, but no rain.

If only I had a telescope.