Orionid Meteor Shower

A quick  recap of my Saturday night.

For those of you that aren't aware, this weekend the rock we call home flew through the debris trail of Halley's comet, as it does every year around this time. Circumstances called for a particularly good show this year; not only was the moon out of sight reducing ambient light and increasing star visibility, but Venus and Mars were also out. What a show!

With the hook of adventure set deep in my mind, the planning phase began. I knew we had to get out of the city, and I knew we needed some cloud free viewing space. So the first step was to find an area clear of clouds at the peak viewing times, around 2-4am:

Credit to NOAA for the forecast. It was apparent that my usual stomping ground of Monroe was definitely out of the question due to the cloud cover. So we looked at our options, and hoped for the best in Yakima. Unfortunately  that's a 3.5 hour drive from Seattle. Fortunately, distance isn't much of an issue for us.

After a quick stop in Ellensberg to try and pick up some more adventurers and a grill, we headed out to a random hill on the way to Yakima. the idea was to stay on the opposite side of the peak from the city to avoid the light pollution, but get as high up to give us the clearest panoramic view possible. Here's where we landed:


The road marked going up was severely eroded, and we eventually decided to abandon it. So we pulled a hard left, dropped the transfer case into low range, pointed the nose in the direction of 'up' and started driving till we were satisfied.

There turned out to be more clouds than anticipated, but we definitely saw some good streaks. When we tried to fire up the grill and cook some breakfast up there, the temperature was too low and the valve iced over as the propane came through it. After a while we abandoned ship, electing for the most direct route back to the visible road rather than trying to located the path on the way down. After a quick nap break for the drivers back in Ellensberg, we pushed home.