Worth big bucks on the market if you find one. Even broken ones.

What time is the meteor shower supposed to be happening?

The perseid are smallish rocks and moving fast - like as not the biggest thing that'll hit the ground will be the size of sand grains, maybe. Most'll just vaporize so you'd be hard-pressed to find any bits at all, even under the absolute best conditions possible.

They're going on right now and have been for days, but peak time will be exactly 24 hours from now, 2:30 am on thursday morning. I'm gonna grab a scotch and see what's outside tonight.

Sweep your gutters with a magnet. There is a fairly good chance you will find some iron meteorites. Very little other iron rains from the sky.

Anything picked up with a magnet (small dust stuff) is more likely to be extraterrestrial dust. It is all over the place, if you find a large chunk odds are it is "slag" from an old Civil War Foundry which many folks confuse as a meteorite. Both North and South used that stuff from a foundry floor, debris, in cannons, made one hell of a mess on human tissue.

You can't ever see much around here. Too much light. You might see a few of the larger ones here and there.

Makes me wonder how many people who have grown up and lived around here all their lives have never seen a real night sky.

Carl Sagan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You can't ever see much around here. Too much
> light. You might see a few of the larger ones
> here and there.
>
> Makes me wonder how many people who have grown up
> and lived around here all their lives have never
> seen a real night sky.


Need to take a ride to a rural area. Odds of finding a meteorite in this area is very slim, most are found in desert regions or in the North Pole.

I saw one 2 weeks ago about 2 AM working on my car in Springfield (VA). At first I saw the sky light up out of the corner of my eye ... I thought someone had set off a firework but I turned my head and it was a huge ball of bright blue fire falling towards earth with pieces breaking off and then it simply disappeared (burned out).

Amazing sight!

Anytime I hear of meteorites I think of Weeds by Stephen King. They also made that into a segment in Creepshow.

eesh Wrote:
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> Anytime I hear of meteorites I think of Weeds by
> Stephen King. They also made that into a segment
> in Creepshow.


The "Sad death of Jodie Verill" staring Stephen King as Jodie.

This meteorite crashed through a doctors office in Lorton, VA in 2010.

http://www.space.com/7811-meteorite-crashes-virginia-doctor-office.html

Earthly iron is mostly steel -- relatively high carbon content just because humans don't find raw/pure iron to be very useful. Anything from space (as far as iron meteorites) is going to be nickel-iron and very very little carbon.

One hit my mom's shed a couple years ago. It pissed me off because I had just replaced the roof, then the stupid meteor or comet put a hole in it and I had to redo a big section. The meteor itself was pretty small, about size of a golf ball. I think my sister still has it.

too cloudy

meteor victim Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> One hit my mom's shed a couple years ago. It
> pissed me off because I had just replaced the
> roof, then the stupid meteor or comet put a hole
> in it and I had to redo a big section. The meteor
> itself was pretty small, about size of a golf
> ball. I think my sister still has it.


Test it. Iron Meteorites have a large amount of nickel. You can buy a chemical to test for nickel as many folks are allergic to it. The stuff is called "Nickel Alert", dab it on with a cotton swab and the swab will turn a red color. It should also be magnetic, and leave no trace line when rubbed across porcelain. Meteorites can be valuable, you can send it to the Smithsonian for testing also.

Surprised at all the people parked on the GW by Mt Vernon. All available parking spaces were used and many people were on the MVT. Couple of large streaks in the sky but nothing spectacular.

As usual, completely over hyped by the media for ratings purposes.

I wish we could go back to the days when news organizations reported the news instead of promoting and hyping it.

There is way too much light pollution here to see anything. You would only see the very brightest objects. The milky way is invisible here.

http://www.youcanseethemilkyway.com/light-pollution/

I have seen it, but I am from pennsyltucky. We barely had indoor plumbing.

>One hit my mom's shed a couple years ago. It pissed me off because I had just replaced the roof, then the stupid meteor or comet put a hole in it and I had to redo a big section. The meteor itself was pretty small, about size of a golf ball. I think my sister still has it.

If this is actually true, it'd be a remarkably rare event. Properly documented that rock would be worth a fortune. Meteorites with a witnessed fall - there can't be more than a few dozen of these, and I read once that there are only two or three which hit a dwelling. Hope you took pictures.

YEDVX Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There is way too much light pollution here to see
> anything. You would only see the very brightest
> objects. The milky way is invisible here.
>
> http://www.youcanseethemilkyway.com/light-pollutio
> n/
>
> I have seen it, but I am from pennsyltucky. We
> barely had indoor plumbing.
not true we saw many meteorites - they were very bright