Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower
Worth a look any year, these meteors, the debris of Hayley’s comet put on a good show of swift yellow meteors! You should see 20 to 25 per hour depending on the light pollution in your area, Although the official rate is up to 50hr in an ideal location. The actual peak is on the morning of the 7th & will be worth a look (if you don’t mind the early Start on a work day) otherwise the weekend might be the go as suggested by Ian Musgrave below, albeit with slightly lower rates per hour:
The radiant of the shower is about five hand-spans up from the eastern horizon and three hand-spans to the left of due east at 4 am (see above for a spotter chart at 5 am). When looking, be sure to let your eyes adjust for at least 5 minutes so your eyes can be properly adapted to the dark.
Don’t look directly at the radiant site, because the meteors will often start their “burn” some distance from it, but around a hand-span up or to the side. The best way to watch the Eta Aquariids is to let your eye rove around the entire patch of the sky above the north-east horizon, between the only two obvious bright stars in the northeast, Altair and Fomalhaut, and Jupiter and Saturn as the centre of your field (again, see the spotter chart at 4:30 am above).
Be patient, although you should see an average of a meteor every 3 to 6 minutes, a whole stretch of time can go by without a meteor, then a whole bunch turn up one after the other.
Telescopes Are Back AND Available on finance at 15% off !
It has been a very difficult 12 months for the supply of telescopes with Covid19 disrupting International supply chains in many unexpected ways. However with a number of long standing back orders now arriving we are now better stocked with scopes than we have been for over 18 months !
One of the most exciting additions are the Celestron StarSense telescopes which take the guesswork out of finding nebula, star cluster, the planets and more for the novice astronomer.
https://nightskysecrets.com.au/telescopes/
We have also partnered with Etika Finance to give a no interest finance option for purchases between $30 and $1000. Every qualifying product on the site now has a finance option available. Making it much easier to budget for your purchase. With the great Bonus of 15% off our price by Etika for a limited time !
Please do contact us to discuss which scope will best suit your observing needs and budget.