Looking back: The Sky at Night
29 August 1981
On 29 August 1981’s episode of The Sky at Night, Patrick Moore talked to meteor expert John Mason, who had recently returned from a trip to the south of France with 20 fellow astronomers from the South Downs Astronomical Society. Their mission – to record that year’s Perseid meteor shower.
The group’s goal was to monitor the shower not just during its peak, but in the days surrounding as well. To access as dark a sky as possible, the astronomers set up camp on a mountain plateau 1,500m above sea level in a remote part of Monts d’Aubrac in Lozère, 30km away from the nearest town.
By 9 August, three days before the peak, the crew had already logged 1,670 meteor sightings. But as the peak closed in, so did the clouds. The group made a mad dash to a site 150km away. Despite seriously damaging their van’s exhaust during the race, they made it to the site by 2:30am and managed to record some 400 meteors before the dawn stopped the show. By the time it came for the astronomers to pack up and head home, they had logged over 2,500 meteors.
See pages 26, 42, 64 and 68 for more information about this year’s Perseids